


Mind your head

by AwatereJones



Series: Mind Me [2]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alien Invasion, Alt Verse, Alternate Universe, Angst, Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2019-12-30 14:01:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 59
Words: 77,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18316682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwatereJones/pseuds/AwatereJones
Summary: So 3 years later Ianto is hiding on a little planet with the silence comforting. An invasion has put paid to that and he must travel with a small group to safety, the grumpy ex-soldier Jack guesses Ianto's ability to block mind control like him. Can they keep their crew safe? Is anyone safe? And will the 2 men find romance in this verse? What do the aliens want?luv my crumbly xxx





	1. Chapter 1

"Williams, you're full of shit." Jack Harkness shot to his feet and loomed over the slightly smaller man. His face was a storm; a growing tornado threatening to hit land inside Cooper's Diner. The red leather topped counter stool threatened to tip over, before settling back onto all its legs. Jack thought about taking him outside and giving him an ass whupping.

"Gee whiz, Jack," Rhys Williams said, "can't you have a simple discussion without getting bent out of shape?"

He leaned back on his stool and held up his hands, cowed by the older man's threat. "All I'm sayin' is if Coriten woulda caught that very first Hover Clutch then things woulda been totally different, and the Galactic Broncos woulda won the Super Bowl."

"That's bullshit, and you know it, Rhys," Jack said, but already the storm was passing. He took a relieved breath, thankful that it hadn't touched down inside Cooper's.

"Now now, you are in a diner, not a Wild West Sector saloon. I don't want any trouble tonight, and I don't want any cussin' either." It was the esteemed Gwen Cooper herself, all five-feet-two of her, leaning on the cold aluminium counter and calming the boys down by giving them an eyeful of her sweet cleavage.

Cher hushed on the old Rock-Ola 434, and Jack crossed the black and white tiled floor, taking a couple of deep breaths as he went. He pushed in two buttons on the restored jukebox. The robotic arm flipped a record and, seconds later, Johnny Xdollita was talking about hanging in there, baby. That was just what Jack did. The ancient Boeshanninan had found this planet a quiet place to settle while having a family but it hadn't worked. Now he was bound here until his family moved on and forgot him, as they all do. Boeshanninans have a long life expectancy, his daughter not full blooded would die before him, probably his grandson too. So what if he looked barely forty and felt eight hundred some days, he knew he was over 100 and deserved some fucking respect from these young pups. He fought for them in the Galactic Wars while they were just jizz in their daddy's dicks!

He opened his wallet and offered a full credit to Gwen Cooper. He held it just far enough away to make her reach, all the time staring at the heaving bosom inside her almost sheer white blouse. For a woman just the wrong side of thirty, she had a damn fine figure. A fella could use a pillow like that to rest his weary head on.

The Williams kid was a smartass, and every day it seemed to Jack there were more and more of them in Torchwood Isles. Time was a kid like Williams would give someone like himself – a man who wore the coat of a rebel – some respect. It showed his true age was in the triple figures, not the forties he looked. He told himself that the best defence wasn't always a good offense, and that thought brought him full circle, back to the damn Galactic Super Bowl that caused the ten-minute argument in the first place.

"Thank you, Jack," Gwen Cooper said. She batted her eyelashes and stuffed the dollar into the cuss jar that sat behind the counter.

The jar was looking pretty full, and that was good news for the Rainbow Children's Hospice over in Lawton Sector, as Gwen Cooper donated every penny she earned from cussing customers to providing a better life, and death, for the children in their care. Can't have any herself see.

"Now, if you boys can't play nice, you can't play at all." She turned her eyes up to the large red clock that hung above the doorway.

"And anyway, look at the time. It's nine-thirty, and neither of you two are gonna be sittin' on those stools at ten-oh-one."

Jack and Williams were the only patrons left in the diner. The twenty-somethings had cleared out around eight, probably heading down to the Bawdy Bear to shoot some pool and drink some beer. Jack wished he'd joined them; a beer might just take the edge off his temper.

"I'm gonna head out now," Jack said. "I want a smoke, and if I stay here, I'm apt to talk about football to this knucklehead some more. And if I do that, I'm probably gonna have to put more credits in your jar than I make in a year."

He grabbed his coat off the end of the counter and found his cigarettes in the pocket. He placed one behind his ear and wriggled into the worn garment. He kept his eyes fixed on Williams the whole time, just in case the guy tried to catch him with a sucker punch.

 _Only one sucker here_ , he thought as he looked back at Gwen.

That was unless the proprietress herself was sucking, but he didn't think so. She had stepped back from the counter, fixing the top button on her blouse, turning it from carefree to conservative. Perhaps she could see the anger behind his eyes. No matter, Jack Harkness had had enough of Cooper's Diner for one night.

The plan was to get an early night. Eight hours of shut-eye before he got back into the rat race.

"Say, Jack," Williams said, "Are you opening up your shop this week? Some of the guys have started calling me horse Rapunzel."

He grinned and flicked his thumb at the horse in question visible out the window, the creature not like those earth ones. More the size of a rhino with long blonde locks flowing back over his shoulders.

"Planning on tomorrow." After eight weeks closed, Jack was pretty sure there were more than a few Rapunzels in Torchwood Isles. That was good; he could do with the money, but damn, already two months since he'd put his wife in the ground, and her only Sixty years old. Groomers were had to come by in these parts, especially one who could handle those creatures.

"Well, that's great," Williams said, and stuck out a hand. "I sure didn't mean to hurt your feelings just now."

"Forget about it," Jack said, ignoring Rhys Williams's olive branch. After a few awkward seconds, the man glanced at his hand and let it drop into his lap as Jack turned to leave.

Gwen grinned and shook her head as she wiped down the countertop. "Right you are, Jack. Rhys, you wanna think about drinking your Co-Cola and heading out to warm the car? I'm washing my hair tonight, and it's cold out there. I don't want you to total my car on a patch of black ice before we even get..."

She trailed off mid-sentence, as the ground rumbled beneath the diner, and shot out a hand to stop a ketchup bottle from crashing to the floor.

"What in hell was that?" Rhys cried, the cuss jar forgotten.

"Probably just a tremor, Rhys," Gwen said, but Jack thought her eyes were a little wider than they should be, and he watched the colour drain from her pretty little face. She gripped the ketchup bottle in both hands as she asked "Didn't you feel the one this morning? Just about frightened me to death."

"This morning?" Jack's pulse quickened. He looked at the nervous face of Rhys as the ground swayed beneath their feet for a second time and the lights dimmed momentarily, shadows washing over the diner as the light fittings swayed from side to side.

Williams hung onto the counter, his knuckles white with the pressure of his fingers against the aluminium.

"I didn't feel nuthin' this morning," he said, and reached for his half-empty glass of Coca-Cola with a shaky hand before draining it in one quick gulp.

Jack nodded to Gwen. "I'm getting out of here. I gotta get home to Alice and the boy."

Jack saw his own fear reflected in her eyes.

And with good reason. The shaking hadn't come from under their feet. It had come from above their heads.


	2. a long walk

Jack stepped out and was hit by a freezing wind. He searched inside his pocket for his keys.

The ground around Cooper's Diner was illuminated by the bright neon pink of the sign that proclaimed its presence. It stretched out across the parking lot and lighted on the pine trees at the edge of the woods that surrounded the clearing, melding with the swaying branches in a fusion of pink and green hues. Strange place to have a diner in a small town like Torchwood Isles – right out on the edge of the woods and ten miles from Main Street. Cooper's wasn't relying on Torchwood Isles' visitors to fill up its cuss jar; it was the generations of Torchwood Isles residents that had kept the sign lit for over fifty years, ever since Geraint and Mary Cooper had opened up in '59.

Jack didn't look back at the diner; just pulled his coat around his jaw, put his head down, and hurried across the lot, past Gwen and Rhys Williams' battered old Honda Accord, toward his own beat-up Toyota Corolla. Weird that they named hovers after old Sol3 cars but it seemed to fit as these backwater hovers were decrepit pieces of shit.

He cursed the February temperature as he went. Felt like a whole heap of snow might be coming tonight, and already a fine drizzle had begun to coat the windshield of the three vehicles on the lot.

He reached the car and fumbled his keys as he tried to get them out of his pocket, dropping them onto the cold, wet ground and cursing once more as he realized he was shaking like the branches of the tall pine that surrounded and hemmed him in on three sides.

After what seemed like an eternity, he managed to get inside the car and sat for a moment, rubbing his hands together and breathing warm air on them, his breath a fog inside the vehicle. He held as still as he could, sure that he could still feel the ground shaking, almost imperceptibly, under him. Then he jammed the key in the ignition and turned, ready to get the heater running and get home where Alice would have the little wood burner doing its best to keep the cold at bay.

Nothing more than a chug and a splutter from under the hood.

"Oh, come on," Jack said. He sighed deeply and turned the key a second time, then a third, holding it in position as the engine convulsed. He hunched over the wheel and tried for the fourth and final time, knowing that if it failed to catch this time, the likelihood that he would flood it was great. Except it didn't feel great – it felt like a damn pisser was what it felt like, and when it chugged like an asthmatic Muttley and quit on his fourth attempt to start it, he punched the dash and flopped back into the seat.

He would have to walk home, and it was thirty-five degrees outside.

A five-mile walk home in thirty-five Fahrenheit and drizzle.

And probably snow. Great. Just fucking great.

Jack got out of the car slowly, feeling a biting pain down his sciatic nerve, and slammed the door a little too hard. He didn't notice when the cigarette slipped from behind his ear and landed in a puddle. That red mist was coming, and he wasn't about to ask Williams for a lift. He couldn't ask Gwen, because Alice was apt to scratch her eyes clean out of her head through jealousy if she showed up at their ramshackle home even if Gwen's boyfriend was driving them. Besides, he was kind of ashamed for anyone to see how they were living. It was either walk home, or sleep out here in the damn Toyota and freeze to death.

In the second it took him to decide that his dogs would have to get his old legs home, the sky roared as something whooshed over the top of him, making him duck almost fast enough to lose his balance. Whatever it was it was gone before he had a chance to look up, and a nervous Jack took his first tentative steps through the night toward home, his pulse rivalling the sound of the wind in his ears.

In a small town like Torchwood Isles, it didn't do a man who felt as old as Jack did any good to have to walk along dirt tracks. Especially on freezing, pitch-dark February nights when steady drizzle fell and the ground beneath his feet was slick and slippery.

The uneven trail stretched ahead of him with the bluish grass peeking through the snow at the edges as he missed the green of Sol 3, and the light from Cooper's neon sign soon faded. Darkness replaced light, and anger replaced fear as cold seeped into Jack's bones.

The damn winters in northern Boeshane were getting worse. The roar overhead came for a second time, and this time the ground was lit up momentarily as whatever was flying in the skies over Torchwood Isles passed directly over Jack's position. It sounded big – way bigger than a helicopter – and it was fast, whatever the hell it was.

It was one thing to have to walk the trail in the fucking dark. It was another thing entirely to have to walk it with weird shit going on. It wasn't the first time he had felt so threatened from above, but it was the first time in a long long time, and John Hart was going to have hell to pay for selling him that unholy piece of junk Corolla.

That would have to wait until morning.

Three more goddam miles.

He would be glad when February gave way to March. Get this long winter over with and feel a little spring sunshine on his face. A bit of distance between himself and the memory of what the cancer did to Betsy. Maybe spring would give Alice the chance to remember her mother the way she was before the cancer. Before the divorce separated the family only to have him need to move back to care for his former wife in the final months of her life. He hoped Alice forgave him as they never spoke of it, the fact her mother had been the unfaithful one forgotten along with the no-hoper who ran at the smell of cancer. He hoped so, he really did, because he wasn't used to having to deal with a weepy, depressed daughter. Alice had always been the person who provided positivity and smiles in their household, and he was sure the dark cloud that hung over them was affecting little Stephen. Except it wasn't the Harkness household, because he was the only Harkness left now that Betsy was dead, and the truth of it was he didn't have a clue how the kid was feeling. Being ten was a lifetime ago.

He blinked drizzle out of his eyes and pushed on. Whatever had flown over his head seemed to have disappeared, and the snow was holding off for now. The drizzle was quickly soaking his coat and weighing him down, but the ground wasn't shaking under his feet and the pain in his back wasn't so bad.

For some unknown reason, the military had been all over the town for weeks, turning up the week after Arnie had disappeared and staying long past when he was found.

It had taken six weeks to find the eight-year-old's frozen body, eyes still open and mouth still open and skin all bloated, folded up like an orphaned puppet, slouched dead in Geraint Cooper's dank disused well, and it had been Jack's flashlight beam that had lit up his purple face. Just the thought of the kid's dead, unseeing eyes reflecting the beam when he shone it down the well was enough to make

him feel nauseous.

The hotdog he'd eaten at Cooper's bubbled inside his gut.

The drizzle came heavier as he trudged onward. Damn. Betsy had told him a thousand times not to eat at Cooper's, _You don't know what that two-bit whore puts in them hot dogs to give you that poison belly._

But that didn't matter now that she was two months in the hard ground of St. Joseph's Cemetery.

The light of the crescent moon in the cloudy sky above was not bright enough to allow him an assured step and he walked slowly, shuffling along with his arms outstretched like any of a hundred mummies or zombies or ghouls he'd seen on cable. But it didn't do a man any good to think of creatures of the night when the night was pressed up to his face.

Images of something inhuman stepping out of the dark flashed through his mind as he inched his way along the potholed dirt track, and the combination of fear and the memory of Arnie's doll-like, unseeing eyes, doubled the chill inspired by the screaming wind. The treetops way above his head were whipped about mercilessly by the wind, and he wondered if a branch might break and crash down on him.

_Fucking John, selling me a heap of junk. Gonna freeze out here._


	3. looking up?

Jack gritted his teeth and leaned into the gusting wind as it drove heavy drizzle into his face.

His outstretched arms failed to protect him as he slipped on a pile of wet leaves and fell on the seat of his blue jeans, instantly soaking his butt and most of his calves.

He let out a moan as a clap of pain shot down through his sciatic nerve all the way to his feet, leaving the nerve endings tingling, and up through his torso to his already aching head. The old war injury was awake and screaming for attention now.

He clambered to his feet and began walking again, just as a cloud cut out the faint light that was present from the moon like a candle being blown out.

Of course, twenty or fifty years ago he wouldn't have had to buy a rickety old shit heap like the Toyota he'd left two miles behind him at Cooper's. twenty or fifty years ago, he was still a young man with his whole life ahead of him, a new and exciting job as a sheriff 's deputy, and a young family to help erase the memories of what he'd seen in the godforsaken desert outside the peninsular.

But the past had obliterated the future, and now it felt like the past was all he had.

"Christ, it's dark out here tonight," he said aloud.

He knew one thing: that he wanted to be out of the damn dark and the damn cold and back home where he could see his hands in front of his eyes. Where dead kids' faces didn't flutter out of thin air in the darkness.

Except home didn't feel like home, not anymore. Not since Betsy's Infidelity and the forced divorce. Not since the laughter dried up and the tears started and cancer drove a wedge between them all more than that man she slept with ever could. Maybe it would have been better for everyone if he'd never returned from the Peninsular War at all.

Didn't matter anymore though, not with Betsy being worm chow. The dust was bitten, the cards were marked, the bucket was cancer kicked.

The drizzle intensified, turning into horizontal rain that the savage wind drove against him. His eyes stung as he edged carefully along the slick trail, pulling the collar of his coat up to cover his stubbled chin. The last thing Jack needed was to fall down, break a hip, and freeze to death like the Popovich boy. Just imagining Alice wearing that look he'd seen on Saskia Popovich's face that day – standing next to the half-sized casket at her only child's funeral – made him slow down even more. The last place he wanted to take a permanent time-out was on Number Five Road.

No one would come up this way until morning when Brett Fishwick, the mailman, would head up to deliver Gwen Cooper's mail. Good kid, Brett. Like his old man, Joe. A family man, a hardworking man. Always trying his best to put good food on the table and smiles on his wife and kids' faces. Jack didn't want to be a corpse the next time they met. Uh-uh.

The ground began to level out beneath his feet, which meant he was about to reach the bottom of Sangrew Hill. That was good; it meant he had gone half the five miles toward Alice's house.

Alice's house, Alice's house. Why was it always Alice's house?

It was their house. _Their_ house. Since she got rid of that shitkicker Ross eight years ago they had lived there as a family. Jack and Betsy, Alice and little Stephen… then Jack in the sleep out while they tried to work things out …. Then in the cabin down the way once she had admitted to the other fella. Now back there with Alice and the kid. Except the kid wasn't so little now. Not to mention the dog; a black lab called Janet. Ever since he brought the damn thing home from the woods it had belonged to the boy. No-one ever claimed it, so they'd been stuck with another mouth to feed.

He'd stumped up the ten grand deposit Alice needed to buy the house that prickface Ross had burned down drunk. Every dime he'd saved from working his balls. That bastard Ross Carter had contributed little more than a few sperm, and left Alice with a broken heart that no man was ever going to fix. Yep, there were too many chickenshits like Ross Carter on the earth, and not enough Brett Fishwicks.

Jack rounded the corner of Sangrew Point and began the second half of his journey, still in pitch-darkness and still freezing cold. The wind blustered around his face, turning the small droplets of rain into crystal missiles that whipped against his stubble-darkened cheeks. He pulled his collar up yet further, trying to cover his nose from the biting wind, and angled his face to the ground as he pushed onward.

 _Damn John, damn car, damn winter_ , he thought, as the keening sound of the wind in his ears drowned out every other sound in the forest of tall conifers that bordered Torchwood Isles.

The comfortable surroundings of Cooper's seemed a long time ago. Another lifetime, in fact. His stomach gurgled and burning pain bubbled up through his chest and into his throat. He needed antacids, but the hot dog was the only part of being at Cooper's Diner that still seemed real after walking almost two-and-a-half miles through the dark. He started to think about a nice warm cup of cocoa as he passed the halfway point of his journey. That, and the image of putting some buckshot into John Hart's skinny ass, was enough to push him on through the darkness.

He was lost in his thoughts and wrapped in the storm, and the keening of the wind rattling his eardrums meant he didn't hear the odd humming sound above him. He kept his eyes on the ground, determined not to wet the seat of his blue jeans again with another slip.

If he had looked up right then, he would have seen the lights twinkling on the vast UFO that hovered above the trees.

.

.

.

.

.

Alice Carter closed the thin beech door of the kitchenette and sat down. The room wasn't much larger than a prison cell. In fact, the _house_ wasn't much larger than a prison cell, and she felt as though she was in solitary confinement.

11 p.m., and still her father wasn't home.

The dryer rocked violently as it spun her old jeans and worn out cotton shirt. She had agreed to take on some hours cleaning St. Joseph's to earn a few extra bucks, and despite her faith being strong, despite the fact she prayed every morning and every night, she hated seeing the wooden cross that marked her mother's grave when she turned up to scrub the hard wooden floors every day. Her mother was her hero, and heroes ought to have headstones that said so, instead of little bits of mahogany nailed together with initials scratched into them. It broke her heart, seeing that little homemade cross each time she dropped Stephen off at school and walked through the cemetery to reach the church.

It wasn't right that her father was spending so much time over there with that woman. Not after what had happened to her mother.

Not after her heart had been torn this way and that by her mother's cancer, after it had been squeezed until it was almost going to burst by Ross. Left to raise a boy without a father, and now not even a grandma to look out for the little guy.

When she closed her eyes she saw her mother, thin and gaunt, the hospital bed too big for her emaciated frame, covered in tubes, barely able to recognize her family because of all the morphine in her body.

"She probably had as much morphine in her as she did cancer," her father said the day after she died.

And she knew he was right, but _this_ wasn't right. Less than two months after she died.

Five nights this week. Five in a row in fact. She knew he didn't go there to spend money, because he didn't _have_ any money. He didn't go there for the food either. Everything on the menu made hell of his guts; greasy burgers and fried onions and fries and chilli sauce.

But he ate the junk food, same as he sometimes drank the whisky when he came home, and it sure as hell wasn't right to drive a death-trap of a car on wet roads in near pitch-darkness.

He might be Boeshanninan but he wasn't bloody immortal despite the age defying serum the Agency had pumped into him.

If only Mama had been given some too.

..

.

.

.

Get out of my Mind - Mind Me Verse Part 1

this is the first one Eleana666


	4. Alice thinks her mother was a saint ... not the sinner

Alice looked up at the clock. 11:20 p.m. The diner closed at ten, and he wasn't _ever_ likely to be in a riveting conversation with any of the bums that went to Gwen's place. Except, that was, Gwen herself. And that wasn't right. Not so soon.

The dryer clanged against the side of the refrigerator, deepening the grooves it had forged in its side, and she had to cross her fingers and hope it didn't wake Stephen, because when he woke in the night he sometimes asked for his father. After eight years, the boy still asked for his father. But there wasn't anything she could say to him. She just had to do the best she could with what God gave her. If Ross appeared in the doorway now, she was pretty sure the only thing she'd be able to do would be to burst into tears. Because it didn't feel like eight whole years since he'd gone. It didn't even seem like a day had passed. Seven years together, and yes, maybe he stayed out late.

Maybe he drank too much, and maybe sometimes he raised his hands to her. But she still missed him. Missed him like hell. There had only ever been Ross, since she was thirteen years old.

The truth was, she blamed it on herself. It was she who'd told him to leave, when she found out he'd been knocking off and knocking up the McKinley broad from Chatterton's. So he'd gone. Left everything and took off in the clothes he was wearing without saying goodbye to Stephen, and without looking back. She tried to keep a smile on her face, for Stephen's sake, but it was getting harder and harder now her mother was gone and God wasn't answering her prayers.

The dryer finally began to wind down until it silenced completely, only to be replaced by the ticking of the clock. At least Stephen hadn't woken. She hadn't been able to go back to the store for almost a month, not after dropping her grocery basket and rushing out, dragging Stephen behind her in hysterics.

It wasn't right. Living in poverty with a fatherless child. It wasn't right that her mother had been taken from her, not when she needed her so badly. Her father wasn't as strong as her mother – she used to think he'd only been in the Army to get away from her – and that wasn't right either. And now he had anger and resentment stopping him from taking care of them.

Nothing was right. Nothing at all.

But how was anything ever going to change? She had always been determined, no matter how many years went by, that she would say her prayers and raise her boy, and God would come through for them. For all of them. But watching her mother suffer so badly had made her start to question whether that was true, and without her faith she had quickly begun to fall apart. So she had clung on to her faith, even when all her hope was gone.

A cup of coffee sat untouched on the table in front of her. It had long since lost its warmth; much like the wet and windy night beyond the small, dirty windows. This was as bad a winter as she could remember. She had been forced to pawn her engagement and wedding rings to pay for a new water heater when the old one gave up the ghost a week after her mother's death as her father didn't own the house any more. Since the divorce it belonged to her mama, and now to her in the will, but that didn't really matter. She lost her own house, had to move home and now it was hers. Didn't' feel right.

What you never had, you never miss, and that was certainly true of money and Alice. All she needed was her daddy and Stephen. And Janet, she couldn't forget Janet. That dog was the only thing that really made any of them smile lately.

A tear broke loose and found its way down her cheek, dripping from her chin into the cold cup of coffee. It was quickly followed by several more. She looked again at the clock. Midnight, and still her daddy wasn't home.

.

.

.

.

Just the other side of the redwood trees that bordered the west side of Torchwood Isles sat the Clifton Centre. Housing thirty-two patients at various levels of psychiatric imbalance, life within the walls of the centre was a stark contrast to the free-flowing Obama River that the patients, or inmates as Nurse Stevens liked to think of them, were never likely to see.

Nurse Holmes had called in sick again, and that meant it had been left to Nurse Stevens and the rookie, Nurse Campbell, to complete their rounds one down. It took an extra hour to box off their psycho-session.

Now, not half an hour after finally sending Nurse Campbell to keep watch over the Suicide Crew and settling down with her copy of _Unbridled Passion_ in the wing she called Land of the Loony-Tunes, she was up and clopping down the corridor, wiping cookie crumbs from the corners of her mouth as she waddled down the long, brightly-lit passage.

"Woo. Yeah. Wooo."

Every night was the goddam same. Midnight, on the dot and without fail, he started whooping and hollering at the top of his voice. Well, maybe not always at the _top_ of his voice, she reflected as she rounded a corner and nearly went flat on her face over a broom, but tonight it sure as hell was.

"Woo, I seen 'em. I seen 'em."

Nurse Stevens reached the room and peered through the window, digging through her keys as she did so. There sat forty-two-year old Earl Buckley – superstar psycho, child and cop killer – staring at the wall and rocking back and forth. His fat stubby fingers were interlaced across the back of his balding head.

Five three, forty pounds overweight, and a fuse blown in his head.

She had worked just over five years at the Looney-Tunes Meat Factory. Earl Buckley arrived on her third night and instantly began his routine of rocking back and forth, shouting either _woo_ , _yeah_ , or _I seen 'em_ in his soprano voice.

He'd done the same every night since, and always on the dot of midnight. It drove her absolutely batshit crazy. All she wanted to do was sit at her station, eat her little cookies that she bought at Coodo's (the expensive cookie store, woman's gotta have some pleasures) and read her latest bodice ripper, imagining she was one of the characters.

But never the heartbroken ones. She didn't care horseshit for getting her heart broken. She liked to picture herself as Madelaine Hornby, the lead character in _Unbridled Passion_ – the tall, dark and handsome Malcolm Steel providing stimulation with his big strong hands and lips.

"Yeah. I seen 'em, baby."

Nurse Stevens snapped to attention. Baby, he said _baby_. In five years, he hadn't said anything other than _woo_ , _yeah_ or _I seen 'em_.

Maybe in another fifty years or so he'd manage to tell her what the fuck he was talking about.

She unlocked the portable medicine cabinet that she positioned outside Buckley's room every time she finished her rounds, and took out the needle containing the sedative that she prepared every time she was on duty, ready for midnight.

Nurse Stevens took the cap off the syringe, unlocked the door of the padded room, and stepped inside.

"Seen 'em. Seen 'em baby," Earl Buckley said, more quietly this time. His eyes remained fixed on the wall, despite her entry, and despite the spectacular view of the giant redwoods under the stars on the other side of the four-inch-thick, reinforced glass that separated Earl Buckley and the world outside. Strict Clifton Centre policy said she shouldn't be in the room alone with Buckley, but she was pretty sure this space cadet's murdering days were over.

"Time for you to quit buggin' me, Earl." She stuck the needle into his flabby forearm. Earl Buckley didn't flinch.

"Seen, seen, seen. Woo, I seen 'em."

In ten minutes, he would be seeing nothing at all. Once the sedative kicked in, she might get some peace and quiet to eat her cookies and resume her Mediterranean cruise with Malcolm Steel. That's if the rest of the wacko farm didn't give her any trouble.

Earl Buckley's eyes were already glazed. His lips continued to mouth the words, but no sound came out. _Just how I like them_ , Nurse Stevens thought as she exited the

room and locked the door behind her. Earl Buckley was now as quiet as the night.

Outside the window, the sky sat big and black, faraway stars twinkling through the gaps in the clouds like precious diamonds.

As far as the eye could see.


	5. enter stage right

Ianto drove with caution, the jittery wipers on the old Chevy Malibu Hover barely able to cope with the rain that fell. He hated having to go to town, preferring to hide up in the mountains in his lovely little cabin doing the long distance tech work on his vid-screen. Since Jaccob three and a half years ago, he preferred solitude. Less chance of betrayal.

This storm was worrying however, forecast to settle for days and he needed supplies. He was hopeful that this time of night would ensure as few people in the store as possible, less interaction was fine by him. Less mental battering.

He passed a hover car on the way up the Pass; a tiny Datsun that didn't look much better than his Chevy, probably with a couple of love struck teenagers making out inside.

As he drove through the rain toward the top of the Brow he tried to silence the contesting voices inside his head as he fought with himself over the latest project, preferring to focus on what little of the road he could see.

Darkness reached down through the tall, thick pine that bordered the slick road on either side, making the narrow lane difficult to negotiate, and he was glad when he reached his destination. He pulled the Chevy into what was normally the most picturesque view of the Valley available.

The valley opened out below him like a huge crater, the steep bank dropping off from Key Brow toward the mostly sleeping town below. The houses dotted among the fields were as dark as the sky above him. The odd light flickered below, but most of Torchwood Isles' residents would be tucked up in their beds, unaffected by the cold and rainy night that gripped their small town.

"Damn," he muttered, "I should have bought a longer coat"

The only sound was the low whine of a bitter wind that blew through the trees. He looked down at the dark shape of the Obama River, and the few lights that twinkled in the rain-soaked town below, ignoring the growing chill inside the Chevy. Of course, he had been terrified.

_Don't show weaknesses._

_._

_._

_._

_._

_._

The damn rain had stopped. But not like it usually did, fading gradually until it ceased completely. It was more like God had watched with great amusement as he struggled along on his journey, before flipping a switch marked _Rain over Jack Harkness_.

One second he was fighting against a swirling blizzard that attacked him like a swarm of bees protecting their queen in the hive, the next he was standing one hundred yards away from their dilapidated old house, looking up at the sky and wondering how the rain could have ceased so suddenly and so completely.

God's idea of how life for Jack Harkness should be. One big crazy joke. Let's make the rain stop just in time to really piss him off. Even better, let's kill his ex-wife after degrading her memory so much that he hates her guts for the feeling she left inside him. God's idea of fun, when he wasn't busy murdering children or starting wars all around the world. When floods and earthquakes got boring; time to have some fun with Jack Harkness.

He was frozen to the spot.

Looking up at the sky as the cold invaded his body and attacked him from every angle. Standing still in soaking wet clothes, and it was thirty-five degrees. What was he thinking?

He half-expected Betsy's face to appear, huge above him in the sky, eyes sunken and ringed with dark circles, face drawn and pale, cheekbones and jaw jutting out, hair gone from the merciless chemotherapy.

_Just what are you doing? Standing there waiting to catch a dose of pneumonia? You're a stupid man, Jack Harkness. You should know better at your age. Alice will be worried sick. Do you never think about anything or anybody other than yourself?_

But he wasn't thinking about himself. In fact, he wasn't thinking about anything at all. He was standing still, and his mind felt like a blank canvas, a morning chalkboard wiped clean of yesterday's chalk.

What _had_ he been thinking about? He swung the splintered wooden gate behind him and walked toward the house. He wasn't thinking of the Toyota, abandoned in the parking lot of Cooper's Diner.

He wasn't even thinking about how much he'd like to give Rhys a shiner when he saw him in the morning, or Gwen Cooper's cleavage when she had leaned on the countertop earlier.

He pushed his slightly bent, silver key into the rusted lock and let himself into the house. The door's hinges screamed in protest and he winced, thinking about the boy. And Alice.

"Daddy," she exclaimed in a voice that was little more than a whisper, "where have you _been_?"

The black Labrador, Janet, pricked his ears at the sound of her voice. He lifted his head from the old blanket on which he lay and studied Jack through the gloom for a moment, before resting his head and closing his eyes, ears still pricked to attention. They had tried to explain to the boy that the dog was male but he was determined on that name so … it stuck.

Alice began to sob as she went to him and put her arms around him, seemingly unaware that he was soaking wet. "I was so worried. I thought something happened to you. I thought maybe you got in a car crash. Where have you been? Are you okay? Why didn't you call?"

Her grip around his neck was painfully tight. Her heart beat fast against his chest, and her whole body shook against his.

Emotionally, he knew, she was in pieces. But he couldn't have called, for two reasons. The first was that he didn't have a cell phone. The reception in Torchwood Isles was shot to shit, it being low in the valley and all. Owen Harper forever complained about it to Jack whenever they ran into each other on Main. "Something should be done, Jax," he would say, a finger wagging in whatever wind was up on any given day. He was the only person Jack Harkness had ever known that shortened his name. He didn't like it but he didn't complain, partly because he didn't want to suffer the embarrassment and partly because Owen Harper was a doctor. Jack had a lot of respect for doctors, and the studying they had to do. The studying was as much a part of the job as diagnosing cancer in people like Betsy Harkness was.

All the roads in his life led back to the Same stormy intersection. The one inside his heart, mind and soul.

_Alice's the most important thing right now. Not Dr. Harper's cell phone problems and not Betsy._

The second, and most definitely defining, reason he couldn't have called was because the phone had been cut off weeks ago, after they had ignored one too many bills. That had left Alice sobbing, same way she was now, head boring into his shoulder like he imagined an ostrich to do with sand, except he wasn't sure they really did that at all. He had heard that somewhere. Maybe Discovery Channel.

_Focus, Jack._

"Calm down, Alice," he said as he held her away from him at arm's length. "You're gonna wake Stephen." He patted her shoulder awkwardly. "There there."

Not that "there there" was going to knit her broken heart back together or make her feel better, Same way Betsy lying half-wasted and half-dead saying "I'm a fighter" wasn't going to stop the cancer from killing her.

Except she was already gone.

 _Alice's all that matters now_ , he thought, mentally slapping himself to focus his attention once more on his wildly overreacting daughter. He was only an hour and a half late, after all. Why should he have to touch base every five minutes like she was Betsy? Betsy was gone.

_Alice, Alice, think about Alice._

He realized he was shivering. Lightheaded too. Maybe he did have pneumonia.

That damn John Hart.

Alice's sobbing continued unabated. _She must have cried a hundred million tears_ , he thought.

"Alice, calm down," he coaxed, freeing himself from her vicelike grip and looking into her exhausted, tear-streaked and puffy face.

The gloomy light from the hallway wall lamp cast only a dim glow, and he suddenly realized that she looked closer to his age than she did her own. She was only twenty-eight, but the stress and pain of the last few months had etched itself in lines that would always hold testimony to how completely her life had been torn apart by the death of her mother.

"Daddy, it's almost 2 a.m. Where were you?"

He could see the quizzical, almost betrayed expression on her face as she asked him, and a teardrop hung from the end of her nose, large and ready to drip.

 _2 a.m. She said 2 a.m._ That couldn't be right. He'd left the diner at nine thirty. It hadn't taken him over four hours to walk home.

"2 a.m.? It can't be. I..."He trailed off. His head was fuzzy, cloudy. He was damn tired after the damn car and the damn cold and the damn storm and the damn dark walk home. But it hadn't taken him more than an hour and a half, surely?

He could walk to Cooper's Diner and back in four hours.

Her inquisitive glare made him feel guilty for something he hadn't done. Her tears had stopped, and in the dimly lit hallway it was like looking at Betsy. Betsy before all the years they spent together. Before the cancer. He was unnerved. But he was angry too. The situation was out of his control. It wasn't his fault the car wouldn't start. It wasn't his fault he'd had to walk home five fucking miles.

"But Alice, it can't be." He pushed past her and went into the kitchen. The clock on the wall did indeed say 2 a.m., but it couldn't be. There was no way in the world...

"Don't you push me, daddy. I want to know where you've been." She had followed him into the kitchen, and her voice had taken on what he could only perceive as an accusatory tone. A _Betsy_ tone.

"I was at Cooper's. Where else would I be?" He attempted to reconstruct his journey inside his mind, from leaving the car to the walk through the cold, dark night down Sangrew Hill, and falling down on his bony old butt (which hurt like a bitch; he expected a big black bruise by the end of tomorrow), and standing looking up at the cloudy sky and the few visible stars just a hundred yards from the house.

Couldn't have taken him too long to get himself those five miles, yet the clock on the wall still said 2 a.m., and the digital clock on the front of the refrigerator said the same.

He looked at his watch, only to see that the silver hands had stopped moving at exactly midnight. On the dot. To the second. He tapped the glass with his fingernail, in full knowledge of the fact it was not going to start the hands moving again, before flopping down heavily and disconsolately on one of the low-budget kitchen chairs hat had dwindled from four to two in eight months.

That was the trouble with getting the cheapest car on the lot. Always breaks down sooner or later. The house was full of the cheapest. The cheapest TV, which crackled like bacon on a platter, the cheapest armchairs, which creaked like the doors of a haunted house, the cheapest beds, with springs that reacted like a jack-in-the-box mechanism whenever you tried to get comfortable, the cheapest clothes, which made them look a decade out of fashion.

But then, what should he care about fashion?

Alice stood in front of him, hands on hips, waiting for an answer or an excuse as to why he was so late.

"I was at Cooper's. I left at nine thirty. The damn car wouldn't start. Get off my back, Alice." He scowled at his daughter. His fingers ached with the cold. He blew into his cupped hands in an attempt to purge the ice that had formed inside his skin.

"But Daddy, it's 2 a.m." Her voice rose an octave on _2 a.m._ , and Jack's whole body went rigid as his dead wife's voice came out of his daughter's mouth. "You're not telling me it took you over four hours to walk five miles, because you'd probably have frozen to death out there by now."

She motioned toward the window. Outside, branches jostled one another to get a better look at what was rapidly escalating into a confrontation, while the wind pressed its face up to the thin glass panels, goading them with a whining, crazy, high-pitched voice. It was the voice of nature and the earth around them, shaking the doors and rattling the windows in their frames, mocking their weaknesses and their ramshackle home.

"Well," he paused. "I'm not telling you it took four hours, no. Dammit, I don't know."He rubbed a hand across his cheeks. Starting to warm up a little now, but still cold. _Damn_ cold.

Alice turned away from him and plunged her hands into a sink full of pots. She scrubbed at a blackened pot, her shoulders shaking as she began to weep again, this time without making a sound.

She couldn't even cook a decent meal without burning the pots. It was no wonder he spent all his time at Cooper's. He gave himself yet another mental slap for that one; thinking about his stomach while his daughter wept. But he didn't have any words to ease her mind. She was accusing him of something he hadn't done, and his night had been shitty enough without his daughter making it worse.

She scrubbed feverishly, trying to dislodge the blackened remnants of the casserole she had cremated earlier.

After thirty seconds she threw it down, splashing water and bubbles all over herself, and whirled around to face her father.

"Don't you lie to me, daddy. I know exactly what you've been doing, and who you've been doing it _with_." Her eyes burned with grief and anger and her tears spilled freely down her cheeks as she leaned against the counter to stop her legs from buckling beneath her.

"Now you be careful about what you're saying," Jack said, and his tone should have shut her up right there, but he knew she was spoiling for a fight, and he knew backing down was not going to come easy.

He turned away from her and walked into the living room. Alice followed him, dishcloth in hand. "Don't you lie to me," she spat at him again, almost shouting across the four feet of threadbare carpet that lay between them.

"Shhh, Alice, you're gonna wake the boy." She was either on the verge of hysterics or two steps over the state line to Cloud Cuckoo Land. At this rate, Jack thought, she was apt to end up in the Clifton Center.

"If it wasn't for Stephen I'd, I'd..." she trailed off.

What _would_ she do? Jack wondered. Buy a Harley and travel the country, smoking weed and drinking beer and listening to heavy rock music? Probably not. Definitely not, in fact. She wasn't made for that kind of life; grease and grime and unprotected sex with strangers in the back of VW's. Family, that was what was important to her. She with the redundant surname, absent husband and bastard son. She with the dead, cancer-destroyed mother and the purposeless father. She who couldn't even afford to have a telephone, and before too long might well be sleeping under the stars.

They were both silent. The TV was muted, a commercial for a flash Mercedes Benz Hover mocking them from behind the shop window of its glass. Alice stepped forward and turned it off. No point using up more electricity and making more bills for the poorest family in Torchwood Isles. She flopped down into the couch. It was as threadbare as the carpet on which it stood. It had been third or fourth hand when they had gotten it from Bob Grady's furniture store, and as far as chattels went, well, it didn't go very far.

Jack couldn't tell which emotion held her more – grief or anger. He flopped down next to her, his own indignation giving way to his exhaustion, and even as she stared at him with those accusatory eyes, he felt his own begin to close. A minute later, he had faded into sleep.


	6. incoming

Ianto started to hum. He realized in the first minute of that hum just how tired he was. Almost tired enough to go to sleep inside the Chevy, even though he was pretty sure he would freeze solid.

Sometimes when he got tired or stressed out he suffered from migraines; head splitting pain and a sensitivity to light and sound that made his head feel like it would split wide open with the sound of birdsong. Then he would have to find a dark room and sleep it off.

The migraines had started when his mind had splintered some time ago and although he had healed there were still side-effects to the mind control he once suffered. The buzzing grew louder, and he realized that it wasn't inside his head, after all. That was a relief; it meant he wasn't going to be struck down by a migraine.

He listened to that buzzing sound, leaning as close to the car's windshield as he could, and peering off to the left and into the darkness.

He saw nothing but trees and cloudy sky, but the buzzing quickly became a vibration that rippled through the air around him. A vibration that made everything feel … not quite right. The car began to shake violently from side to side, and he clapped his hands over his ears, fighting a sudden urge to scream as he felt blood pounding through his temples.

 _Oooo, Ianto's afraid of the boogeyman_ , a voice said from the back seat of the car. He whirled around. It was Jaccob's voice, and it was an old childish tease, and his incredulity was etched onto his face for all to see.

Except there was no-one there to see it. The back seat was empty, and he wondered if he was having a brain haemorrhage, such was the pressure of the vibration inside his skull. He turned to face forward, and froze in his seat as he forgot he'd ever even _met_ Jaccob.

Forty feet away from him, a disc-shaped object hummed slowly across the valley. It was below the position where he sat, and it cruised along smoothly through the freezing winter air, hanging over the sleeping towns below.

The car rocked around him, and Ianto was paralyzed where he sat. He didn't realize this; his attention was completely focused on the sight before him. It definitely wasn't something made by the military. He didn't know how, but he knew that for sure. It was not a carrier or a planetary hopper. This was … like nothing he had seen before.

 _That thing is huge_ , he thought. It eased through the air, emitting the humming sound that filled up every inch of the atmosphere around him. Apart from that deep, bone splitting hum, it made no other sound. If it was Agency it would have some sort of jet that would make a sound entirely recognizable. But it wasn't. He knew it wasn't.

 _Holy, holy shit. That thing's got to be half a mile wide,_ he thought _._

In fact, it was slightly less than half a mile wide through its centre. It was perfectly round – more perfect, he thought, than any man or machine made circle ever created – and it was a deep silver colour synonymous with the classic description of a UFO.

It floated through the air, passing directly below where Ianto sat, blocking out his view of Lawton and Torchwood Isles below. On the top of the craft, lights changed through a spectrum of greens, blues, reds and yellows that were brilliant in their intensity and cast thin beams away into the night sky. They reached away into infinity as far as his eyes could see, through the clouds and away into space.

The centre of the craft was now in a direct line with him. Somewhere deep in the back of his mind he could hear the other car he'd seen, screaming away, its tires spinning on wet leaves as its occupants attempted to

_...get the fuck out of here..._

The thought came to him suddenly as the tail-end of the craft passed his vantage point and the car stopped shaking. Simultaneously, his paralysis was broken and he turned his head slightly to keep his eyes on the craft as it oozed through the air. He fumbled for the key in the ignition.

This wasn't a weather balloon.

It wasn't a top-secret military aircraft either.

Ianto knew that.

This was _them_.

 _They_ were here.

He got the engine started, groping blindly as he watched the craft, thinking that you could fit the whole population of Torchwood Isles _and_ Lawton inside it at the same time.

_Don't think. Shield! Shield like you were looking at Jaccob._

In his haste to get moving, he put the car into drive and almost tramped down on the gas without thinking about the drop below. He forgot in an instant how close he had come to death, as the craft disappeared behind the trees.

Ianto backed out onto the road. He went too fast; if there had been any cars coming up he would almost certainly have been shunted over the edge. They would have no reaction time whatsoever, but Ianto was in luck.

The other car he had seen earlier had already roared away recklessly from the scene. It had, in fact, wrapped itself around a tree, killing the wide-eyed young couple inside. But Ianto wanted to follow the ship.

Maybe it would land. Maybe he would see what he was about to run from for his very life. He knew that much ... this was bad. Real bad.

With a flash of white that merged the different colours in the million lights on the craft, it soared away from him, into the sky. It ascended smoothly and effortlessly, leaving him open-mouthed as he watched it travel faster than he could ever have imagined.

He hadn't gotten to see what was inside, and he pulled onto the side of the road as he watched it become no bigger than the stars.

But maybe they would come back, and maybe he would get to see exactly what they looked like. His body tingled with adrenaline that felt like the energy force of another world washing over him.

Yes, he was sure they would be back, and that he would see them again. Feel them again. That moment had … something on that vessel had called to him as clearly as Jaccob once had only this time … this time there was no fear.

He would feel that again.

And he was right.

It would be bad.


	7. closer

The cold and rainy night gave way to a morning on which weak milky sunlight filtered through Jack's filthy bedroom window. Dust motes floated in the weak rays which fell onto the tangled bed sheets in which Jack had wrapped himself. He had woken on the couch at 4 a.m. and dragged his aching legs into the cramped bedroom, falling back to sleep the instant his head had found the pillow, without so much as taking off his boots.

At 9 a.m. he awoke with a jolt of surprise. The military had ingrained early starts into his routine, and sleeping past 8 a.m. was something he hadn't done in over sixty years.

He grabbed a pack of smokes from the bedside table and set fire to the end of one, inhaling deeply as sleep's veil slipped away. Betsy had chewed on him for years to give up the smokes. Not anymore. Kind of ironic that she was the one who'd never smoked and there she was, dead of cancer, while Jack smoked forty a day and still breathed the same air he had for his entire adult life. _Ha-ha, good one, big guy._

Still, she wouldn't be nagging him anymore. If he wanted to smoke, then smoke he would.

The house was silent. Alice had taken the boy to school and would by now be arriving at St. Joseph's. The pay wasn't great, but she sometimes brought home a pack of cigarettes, and she always saw that they didn't go hungry when he had a quiet week at the shop. He had a feeling she wouldn't be bringing a pack today.

He stood and stretched, feeling ribs popping in his chest and watching ash drip from the end of the cigarette onto the carpet. He absentmindedly ground the ash into the thin pile.

The events of the previous night began to swim into focus, and he remembered what he had to do this morning. He had to go and give Hart a piece of his mind for selling him that shitty Toyota that now sat rusting outside Cooper's.

 _If I was twenty or forty years younger I'd put the sonofabitch's lights out_ , he thought, not for the first time, and grabbed a robe from the back of the bedroom door. The morning sunlight did nothing for the temperature inside the house, and he shivered as he went from the bedroom into the maple-lined kitchen, the morning chill of February hanging in the silent house.

Alice had turned off the heater before she left. Even worse than that, she had pulled the plug on the coffee pot too. That told Jack all he needed to know. She was still pissed at him for coming home late last night.

 _Despite the fact there was nothing I could do about it_ , he thought.

He rubbed at the spot at the top of his thigh where he had fallen. It felt tender and bruised, and his hamstrings felt tight enough to tear.

But what had actually happened last night? He didn't _actually_ know. All he knew was that it had been 2 a.m. when he'd gotten home, and in Alice's mind that meant only one thing; he was having an affair with Gwen Cooper.

Well, maybe she changed her mind about that after seeing that the car wasn't out front when she left to take Stephen to school. Except she wasn't thinking logically lately, due to the strain her mother's death had put on her. He wouldn't be surprised if she hadn't even registered the fact that the Toyota wasn't parked in the drive, and gone right on thinking he'd been giving it to Gwen Cooper until the early hours.

It really chapped his ass. I mean, so what if he had been giving it to Gwen Cooper? He was not a bloody widower. He was a Divorcée. They were apart, she had someone else for the love of beer. But no … she's dead so he's a prick. Typical.

He poured a glass of OJ and dumped himself into the couch, letting out a low groan as the bruises from last night's slip flared painfully once more.

At the sound of his voice, the black Labrador raised its head and eyed him inquisitively.

"What do _you_ want?" Jack said.

Janet stood, shook off his own slumber, and padded over to Jack. His muzzle pushed at the hand holding the cigarette, and he gave what Jack could only surmise was a reproachful, doleful stare.

"Okay, okay. Jesus, can't a man have any pleasures?"

The dog let out a low whine and returned to its bed in the corner of the room. Jack stubbed out the cigarette in a dirty ashtray – Alice was definitely pissed – and decided a wash would be enough.

If he had to walk three more miles to Hart's lot there was no point in showering. He was apt to end up stinking to high heaven anyhow. He looked out the window at the morning sunshine. At least the storm had passed. Last thing he wanted was to walk three miles in the rain after walking five in it the night before. He turned his glance toward the sky, observing the pale blue cloudless ocean.

That was when he heard it again. It was the noise he had heard as he walked the dark trail last night. It was a whooshing sound; something moving very fast through the sky above him, so fast, in fact, that he didn't see whatever it was before it was gone. It couldn't have been anything other than a fighter jet, he thought, and he wondered why in God's name a fighter jet would be round these parts.

But something didn't quite sit right. He knew the sound fighter jets made, and this had a slightly different sound to it – almost like a buzzing, humming sound underlying that almighty whoosh.

He forced it to the back of his mind; he needed to get moving. He could think about it later on, after he had spoken to Hart. If he could get a loaner from Hart, then maybe he could open up the shop this afternoon and earn his own smokes. But what Jack didn't realize was that he, and everyone else in Torchwood Isles, was going to have a lot to think about before the day was out.

.

.

Ianto hadn't slept a wink. He sat bolt upright in the driver's seat of the Chevy, eyes fixed on the sky above. Despite the heater running on high, he shivered inside the tin can. Almost eight hours had passed since the craft had soared away from him and into space, and Ianto knew he couldn't wait around the rest of his life for them to come back. He had to break this paralysis.

He drove cautiously, coming across the still smouldering wreck at the foot of the hill. He slowed only momentarily; there was nothing anyone could do for the couple inside the vehicle now. They had burned alive inside the car. Ianto had to keep moving.

He pushed on, sunlight spattering his face as he drove through the trees.

.

.

.

.

Jack walked into Hart's car lot. As he dodged in and out of the second-hand cars that were lined up on the potholed concrete, he heard nothing but the breeze rustling the huge plastic banner which hung from the roof and proclaimed that Hart's was best.

Not in Jack's opinion.

"Hey, Hart, you in there?" Jack called out. He wasn't on the lot out front. Nobody was; business was slow for Hart's. Jack walked out back to the workshop.

"Hey, who that?" John Hart called out from under a Nissan.

" _That_ is Jack Harkness, and _we_ have got to talk," Jack replied, trying to keep his cool and only just about resisting the urge to grab the ankles that protruded from under the Nissan and dragging the bastard out to face him.

Hart slid out from under the hover and got to his feet. "Hey, Jack, how you doing?" His face was covered in oil, and he extended an oil-blackened hand that Jack eyed with disdain.

"I'm not doing too good today, John. See, that piece of shit you sold me quit on me again last night. That's three times in four weeks"

Hart wore half a grin on his smug face.

He thought this was a joke. He thought _Jack_ was a joke.

He wiped his hands on a rag that was only going to make them dirtier. "Sorry about that Jack, but there was nothing wrong with it when you drove it away from here."He walked past Jack and out into the lot out front.

"That's bullshit and you know it, Hart," Jack said. He followed close behind Hart. "I'm sick of playing nice with you. I'm not senile."

"What's the problem?"

"Won't start. Just chugs until you flood it."

"Sounds like the starter."

"Well it's not the damn wipers," Jack said. He thrust his balled fists into the still damp pockets of his coat and stepped back out of swinging distance of John Hart. Not because he thought the man might try to start a fight, but in case he lost control of himself and let his emotions get the better of him.

"Okay, Jack. So it's the starter. What do you want me to do about it?"

"I want you to fix the damn thing, or replace it, or whatever. But first of all you gotta get it. It's outside Gwen Cooper's place. I had to walk damn near five miles home last night."

"Oh yeah? And how is Gwen?" John Hart said, exposing his pearly whites in a full grin that Jack didn't like one bit. The man was implying something, and the question was one which he wouldn't be answering either side of Armageddon.

"Now just you listen here, you..." He trailed off, one finger extended ready to jab John Hart, as a Chevy swung into the lot too fast, barely missing a sun-bleached Coke machine. It screeched to a halt around twenty feet from where Jack and John Hart stood. Hart's kid got out and wandered past, breaking his concentration. Damn, he looked like his father.

"So, anyway, Jack, what do you want me to do about that old Toyota of yours?" John Hart asked again, obviously impatient to get rid of him.

"What I want you to do, Hart, is go collect it, bring it back here, and have it purring like a goddam kitten by tomorrow. Another thing. While you're fixing that car, and I mean _fixing_ it, I want a loaner. I'm too damn old to be walking round these parts. I got shrapnel in my knee and I smoke forty cigarettes a day. Okay?" Jack's voice peaked on "okay", and it appeared that Hart finally got the message.

His smile faded.

"Sure, okay, Jack. You can take this Nissan. I'm done with it now. I'll go pick the..."

"Yeah, deal," Jack said, knowing full well that he would get what he wanted one way or another.


	8. birds

As Jack drove toward the smoke drifting up over the trees, cigarette dripping ash onto the driver's seat of the Nissan, he heard it again. This time was the loudest yet, and it scared him half to death.

It sounded like a jet was about to appear over the top of the trees and slam into him, right there on Obama Road. Except hearing the sound of something like that took him off Obama Road and put him right back twenty years, into the barren desert outside the Peninsular.

He swerved over to the side of the road, the car half into a ditch, and jumped out, shielding his eyes from the chalky sunlight that forced its way through the clouds, to try and see what was above him.

But it was already well gone, and he wondered how something moving so fast through the sky could do so without causing a sonic boom.

Torchwood Isles wasn't an area where the military tested top secret flying craft. That knowledge, coupled with his loss of two hours and the noises in the sky, made him very uneasy. His breath came in ragged bursts and his muscles tensed painfully.

He sat back inside the car with the door open, his claustrophobia battling with his fear. The roof of the car made him feel only slightly less threatened by whatever was in the skies above Torchwood Isles, and he fired up another cancer stick.

He was suddenly afraid of his surroundings, and he didn't know why. He would have to check what was smouldering down there in the woods. It was too cold for a forest fire to have been brought about by heat and too wet for anything in the woods to provide kindling, so he knew there had to be something else burning near the bottom of Point Pass. A stream of white smoke drifted had flashed overhead, whatever had made that god-awful noise, had done so without leaving a vapour trail.

He took a couple of long drags on the cigarette, blew smoke out through his nose, and flicked it out. He slammed the door of the car and filled its interior with cigarette smoke. John Hart wouldn't be happy, but Jack really couldn't give a damn about Hart. He began to drive again, concentrating on the car's performance in an attempt to calm himself down. The Nissan actually wasn't bad.

It didn't chug when he turned the engine over; it started first time. Its suspension was better than the Toyota's had ever been. Potholes in the road didn't jolt him in his seat nearly as much as the heap of junk that presumably still sat up on the lot outside Cooper's. He tried to focus on getting to the source of the smoke down somewhere near Number Five Road and calming his breathing instead of on the skies above.

Then he felt the first hard thud on the roof of the vehicle.

"What in God's name?" His question was answered as he watched something fall into the road ahead of him. He stepped hard on the brakes, coming to a halt, ten feet from where the dead bird lay.

Another thudded on the roof of the car, loud enough to make him duck and hard enough to leave a dent in the roof of the vehicle. The next one hit the windshield and slid down the hood of the car, leaving a smear of blood on the glass in front of him.

"Holy shit," he breathed, as a rain of dead birds fell from the sky.

They were dead before they hit the trees or the ground; he could see that none of them flapped their wings in an attempt to fly. Dozens quickly piled up in front of the vehicle on the road. Jack stared in disbelief, flinching every time one hit the roof of the Nissan.

"I gotta get out of here."His voice sounded weak and frightened inside the car. Birds continued to rain down from above, and puddles began to form in the road. Red pools that bubbled like they were hot.

_What in hell's going on around here? Time vanishing, people acting weird, fires in the woods, the noises in the sky and now this. All in less than twelve hours._

He had no explanation for any of it. It was like someone was carrying out an experiment on their small town. He grimaced as he drove through the birdstorm (he could think of no other name for it). He would head through the woods, check out what was burning on Number Five Road, and drive over to Jim's office. Try and figure out what the hell was going on.

He drove through the steady thuds of birds hitting the car, grimacing when one left a crack in the windshield. The road ahead was covered with hundreds of them now, and there was nothing he could do but run over them as he drove toward the smoke. Perhaps some kind of radiation storm was hitting the town.

He rounded a corner at the bottom of the hill and slammed on the brakes. The birdstorm continued, but he was momentarily so distracted by what he saw that he didn't even flinch when three birds hit the roof of the Nissan simultaneously.

He had found what was causing the smoke. It was a car, crushed horribly against a tree and completely burned out. He thought it unlikely that anyone inside would have escaped the wreck. They would almost certainly have burned to death inside the vehicle. The doors of the car – the make was unrecognizable and the license plate had long since melted – remained closed, and he knew he had stumbled on a tragic scene. He also knew that he couldn't exit his vehicle to check out the wreck. The rate and speed of the birds falling from the sky would mean serious – perhaps even fatal – injury if one was to hit him.

He found his cigarettes and lit another, before driving past the crushed vehicle, through the rain of birds, and on toward Sheriff Hoolihan's office.

Jack was breathless inside the car. The birds continued to rain down from above, and he felt like a sardine in a tin. The windshield of the vehicle was completely shattered. It bowed inwards, but so far the safety glass had held. He didn't know if it would be better if it just caved in completely. At least then he would be able to see the road ahead of him, and then he might be able to speed up slightly.

He drove at ten miles per hour, squinting through the shattered glass and bloody bird remains that covered what was left of the windshield. Was it ever going to stop? It felt like the end of the world.

Besides the state of the windshield, the car was a real mess. John Hart wouldn't be happy when he saw it. Two of the tires were flat, both on the left side of the vehicle, and the roof was so beaten up by the rain of birds that it too bowed inwards, meaning that Jack had to bend his knees and slide down in the seat to keep his back as close to straight as possible.

He gripped the wheel as tightly as he could. His knuckles bitched about this, but he was terrified of what would happen if the windshield _did_ give way. Then the birds would be hitting _him,_ and he was plenty relieved when he reached the end of Point Pass and turned onto Deep Wood Road and realized the birds were hitting less frequently. He still took no chances, driving the remaining two miles slowly and carefully. Sheriff Hoolihan's base was halfway down Deep Wood Road, and it took him a further fifteen minutes to reach the one-story, four-roomed building.

He pulled off Deep Wood Road and into the small clearing that served as a parking lot in front of the station. The ground surrounding the building was covered in dead birds of all shapes and sizes.

Jack killed the engine and popped the handle to open the door. When it didn't budge, he put his shoulder to it to try and force it open. It was no use, the door had buckled and the lock had jammed, and he was forced to clamber over to the passenger seat and exit the vehicle that way.

It appeared that the rain of birds was over, for now at least. Looking around, Jack thought that every bird in the Camber Valley must have fallen out of the sky.

Jim Hoolihan stood in the doorway of the building, protected from the birdstorm, his jaw hanging agape on its hinges, and Jack was relieved to see another human being, even if that person _was_ Jim Hoolihan.

Maybe it wasn't the end of the world after all.


	9. blood

"Jack, get in here," Jim called out.

Jack staggered to the building and put a hand on the doorframe.

He bent double, breathing rapidly, and for a moment Jim thought he might pass out.

"What the hell's going on around here?"

"I don't know, Jack. Are you okay?" It had been a cold winter this year, but he'd never heard of it being so cold that birds fell dead from the sky. Maybe it had something to do with the noise - that god-awful roar – that he'd heard shortly before the rain of birds began.

"Seems like every bird this side of Diana Lake fell out the sky in the last half hour," Jack said. His face was pale and his eyes were wide.

"But what caused it?"

"There was a noise. In the sky. Sounded like a jet coming down in the woods, but it went by too fast for me to see it. I've been hearing noises like it since last night."

"I heard it around ten. But you heard it last night? You should've called me, Jack. If something's going on around here that endangers people, then I need to know."

"What good would calling you have done?" Jack flexed his fingers as he spoke, easing the pain and getting the blood flowing through them to warm them up.

"I can't deal with something I don't know about. If the military is putting your family's lives at risk, then I have to know so I can get on the phone and tell them to test their planes somewhere else."

"Leave my family out of this. My ex-wife is dead, my daughter is half mad with grief, and we're drowning in medical bills that you made sure I wouldn't be able to pay." Jack turned accusatory eyes on the Sheriff who wore the uniform Jack had last.

"That's wrong, Jack, and you know it, and now isn't the time for dwelling on the past. I need to know how far across the valley this thing goes before I can figure out how to deal with it."

Jim stepped out of the doorway. Jack followed, and Jim locked the door behind them. The ghosts of Jack's past would have to wait. Jim had bigger fish to fry. Military planes making birds fall out of the sky was not his top priority, and Jack losing his job as a deputy had been a long time ago and out of his control.

"Well, I was out on Cooper Road, not far from Cooper's Diner, when the first one hit the roof of the car." He motioned toward the badly damaged Nissan. "Scared me half to death. Sounded like a bomb going off. It carried on all the way round Brow Point Pass and all the way down Deep Wood Road, 'til I got here. Then it stopped."

Jim Hoolihan nodded. "It's right across the valley then?"

"That's not the only thing. Reason I was headed that way was because I saw smoke drifting up over the trees. When I got to the Pass, just before I heard that noise coming from the sky, and just before the birdstorm started, I found the reason for the smoke. That's why I was headed here. There's a car wreck up there. Wrapped itself round a tree, and by the look of it, I'd say it burned all night."He lit a crushed cigarette and took a long drag. "Would seem anyone inside didn't make it out." Smoke seeped out of a crack halfway down the cigarette.

"My God." He paused momentarily while he tried to collect his thoughts. "I guess we better get over there and check it out."

"You _guess_? You mean there's something more important for you to worry about? Whatever happened to the birds was damn weird, Jim, but the death of however many were in that car is more important than a couple of hundred, or even thousand, birds."

The two men ran toward the sheriff 's cruiser, casting glances skyward and praying no more birds decided to fall right then. Jim clutched his trusted wind-up radio in his left hand, his keys in the other. As they slammed the car doors simultaneously, the phone in Sheriff Hoolihan's office began to ring.

.

.

.

.

.

Ianto heard a pattering sound all around him, and glanced up into the cover of the trees. A drop of water hit his cheek and rolled down its stubbled contours, forging a path like the fast-flowing Obama River forged a path through the landscape less than a mile away.

 _Rain is okay_ , he thought.

Rain wasn't dangerous like the birds had been. A thick line of congealed blood masked the right side of his face where a Fox Sparrow had crashed into him as it fell from above. Ianto didn't know that it had been about to migrate to warmer climes. If the ships had waited one more day to announce their arrival over Torchwood Isles, then the bird would have been on its way south. Instead, it had hit Ianto just above his right eye and made a one-inch gash. He hadn't felt any pain. He had enough adrenaline surging through him to ensure it was only the blood obscuring his vision that made him aware that the bird had even cut him when it hit him.

The car was long since abandoned back up the road, now totally un-drivable even if the birds were not making the place seem like some horrible patchwork quilt of feathers on the ground.

Ahead of him was another figure, one that seemed to ooze something from him that made the air around him a putrid greenish bile colour. Ianto had never seen an aura so vividly and he shifted his eyes from the canopy above and back onto the house. She no longer stood at the window, and he wondered if he had time to warn her but the man ahead was also watching and grunted to himself "now is the time to move, Earl."

The rain was light, and the canopy above provided shelter. A few drops filtered their way through as he waited for his opportunity to run for the door to the house and hopefully safety from whatever this thing was following him with the malicious intent.

The back door creaked open and a dog ran out into the garden. It was a Labrador, a black Labrador. Ianto watched the dog as it tilted its head back and sniffed at the air, before heading toward where he had concealed himself.

The dog trotted toward him and lifted its leg on the hemlock behind which he was hidden. Then it walked around the young tree and sniffed at him. The dog wandered away. It sniffed around various points at the edge of the clearing, before sneezing four times and ripping up grass with its front paws.

Ianto was distracted for a moment as he watched the dog then he started with horror as he watched Earl rise and brush himself off. He walked boldly from the woods, into the clearing and toward the house. The back door remained open for the dog to wander in and out as it pleased, and Earl Buckley slipped into the kitchen unseen and unheard. A sandwich sat on the countertop; presumably she had prepared it for the boy. A knife lay in the sink. A sharp knife.

He heard the flush of a toilet from the bath room and braced himself. "Hello?"

He could smell the soap she had used to wash her hands. She bent in front of the TV.

 _Ianto_ moved for the house with a pounding heart.

Earl moved fast too. He was on her before she could react, growling viciously as he plunged the knife into her. In his frenzy, all he saw was red. Five, ten, fifteen times the knife slashed through the air, burying itself with crunching force six inches into her body with every plunge. For a split second she struggled. But the attack was too quick for her to see it coming.

All she had seen out of the corner of her eye was a figure bolt across the room, and then, within ten seconds, she had been all but dead.

The third and fourth blow had completely severed her internal carotid artery, and blood had spurted from her neck as Earl continued to thrust the knife into her. It soaked Earl, the carpet, the walls, and some even reached the ceiling.

 _Leave_ , the voice commanded. Earl dropped the knife and went back to the kitchen.

He looked at the chaotic scene in the living room. The TV had been knocked off its stand during the frenzy. Alice Carter lay next to it.

Her eyes were wide and staring. Most of the blood that had coursed through her veins was no longer in her body. He looked at her staring eyes and wondered what they were seeing. Nothing in this world.

 _Leave_. More urgent now.

 _I did that_ , he thought. He caught sight of himself in a full-length mirror that was spotted with Alice Carter's blood. The cotton shirt that had been so white was now a mixture of dark mud, grass stains, and deep crimson.

He ran through the house into a bedroom and grabbed a pair of jeans that were hanging over the back of a chair. Too big, but not covered in blood. He could roll them up, and they would be much warmer than the thin trousers he arrived in. He grabbed a wool sweater from a half-open drawer and made his way out of the room. He stepped out the back door into the garden and breathed deeply, savouring the moist air. The dog sat with its back to him, looking off into the trees. The rain was a little heavier now; the sound of it falling on the conifers sounded like thousands of children's fingers tapping on glass.

 _I did that_ , he thought again, and then spoke aloud.

"But it ain't nothin' bad. It was for them."

The dog looked up at him.

Earl Buckley patted it on the head, leaving the blood of Alice Carter in its shiny coat, before disappearing back under the protective canopy of the trees.

Inside the house Ianto found the scene and cried out with horror before looking for a phone.

It had taken mere seconds ... as if sped up. This man had done this in the time it had taken Ianto to cross the back yard to the house?


	10. Jack reaches the house

"You really think we're dealing with something from another world here, Jack?"

They were in Jim's cruiser, heading west up Point Pass. It freaked Jack out to think that an extraterrestrial life force could be responsible for the birdstorm, but that, added to the missing time from midnight to 2 a.m., his watch stopping at exactly midnight, the noises in the sky, and the car wreck that had killed two people at the bottom of the Pass, all felt like linked events to Jack.

He didn't know it, but the worst thing yet was about to come.

Jim drove more slowly than normal, despite the urgency he felt. He didn't want to hit anything large and end up with a flat tire or ruined suspension.

"Things aren't right in Torchwood Isles, Jim. You've lived here over sixty years. Tell me, you ever seen anything like this before?" Jack asked.

The old wind-up radio sat on the dashboard in front of him. It slid from the dash as they rounded the bend onto Cooper Road and Jack reached out and caught it before it could drop to the floor of the cruiser.

"I'm with you. Things aren't right. But UFOs, Jack? It's a bit of a stretch. The treaties prohibit any travel without warning and why this backwater dump?"

Jack pointed to his Toyota as they passed Cooper's Diner. "My car wouldn't start last night. I was in the diner and the ground shook. Thought it was an earthquake, but I heard those noises in the sky as I was walking home, and, the worst part of it was, I lost two hours."

Jim slowed as they passed the diner. Three magpies lay dead on the crumpled roof of the car. Several more lay around the vehicle. The windshield had a large crack running from the top almost to the bottom. _Be a while before anyone'll be driving that again_ , he thought.

"You lost two hours?" The cruiser sped up slightly as they left Cooper's behind.

"Yeah, I was walking home through the trail here, and next thing I know I'm stood outside my house. Alice was frantic, and when I looked at the clock it was 2 a.m. I left Cooper's around nine thirty."

They turned onto Number Five Road.

"So, what? Are you saying you were abducted by aliens or something?"

"I'm not saying that, no." Jack sighed. "But you've seen it on TV Same as I have. People encounter these things and they lose time. It just goes missing. Vehicles quit. And the birds falling out of the sky? You're not telling me that a military plane flying low would kill thousands of birds like that?"

"I don't know." He glanced across at Jack and saw that he was deadly serious.

"Things aren't right. You don't need to be a mastermind to know that. When a lot of strange things happen in a small town, they're usually linked." Jack growled "Don't mock me, Jim. I'm telling you, there's something flying over Torchwood Isles that has nothing to do with the Army. I'm sure of it."

"So _that's_ why you were driving the Nissan, huh?" He wanted to change the subject. He wasn't mocking Jack, and he needed to keep him on side. He had to tread carefully. Jack was obviously shaken up by the events, and Jim was worried that if he pushed him too hard he would shut down. It was one of the symptoms of his illness."Yeah, I went down to Hart's lot this morning, around ten thirty."

Rain had begun to fall on Torchwood Isles. The wipers smeared it across the windshield as the two men drove. Jack was surprised the cruiser had escaped damage during the birdstorm. It seemed to be untouched.

Jim swung the car around the first of Number Five Road's narrow bends, slowing down to fifteen miles per hour to do so.

They had turned onto Obama Road. In another few moments, Jack Harkness's worst nightmare would be realized.

Jim pulled up outside Jack's house.

Jack popped the handle and got out. A moment later, Jim did the Same.

"Say, I've not seen Alice in a long time. Mind if I come in and say hello?"He smiled for what felt like the first time that day, hoping their unspoken truce would hold. If he could put a smile on Alice's face, then chances were he could start to mend his friendship with Jack. Forget about the past, and put what happened between the two of them where it belonged: behind them. Buried like the woman they had both loved.

"Sure. I just want to check in on them. Wait until you see how big Stephen has gotten. I'll just make sure they're okay, and then we'll get moving again." They headed for the house. As they reached the halfway point between the car and the door, Jim's instinct told him something wasn't right. It was more than the birds scattered about the patchy lawn. The front door was slightly ajar. On top of that, as they reached the front step, he could see what looked like a handprint. A bloody handprint. Jack stopped dead in his tracks and looked at Jim with searching,

wide eyes.

Jim's age-lined brow creased, as he wondered what they were about to find inside the house. The handprint looked like a small one.

His left hand reached down and felt for the handle of his pistol.

"You've got to stay out here, Jack," Jim said.

Jack began to shake fiercely at the sight of the open door and the child-sized bloody handprint under the keyhole.

"But it's my daughter and grandson in there." He was terrified.

Betsy was gone. He couldn't stand to lose anyone else. The thought that something had happened to them inside the house, well, it was a thought that made him panic like he hadn't even panicked when he was in the desert with incoming fire smashing into the walls around him.

"Jack, I don't care. If something's happened then you're better off out here. You know there's some crazy stuff going on around here, and whether there's aliens flying overhead or not, I don't want to frighten you."

"You don't think..." Jack trailed off. The thought was too painful to be spoken aloud.

"I don't think anything right now. Except that I need to go in there alone. Maybe Stephen cut his hand making a sandwich. Maybe he's playing out back or in the woods somewhere."

The rain was heavier now. _Yup, the winters round these parts are definitely getting worse_ , Jack thought, and instantly had a flashback to the previous night.

There _had_ been something above him in the sky. But it hadn't sped over his head like whatever was up there today. It had just been there. It was...

"Hello?" an unfamiliar voice called softly from inside the house "Is someone out there?"

Jack snapped back to attention.

Alice.

Stephen.


	11. too close for comfort

"Take my keys. Get in the car and wait for me there. Otherwise you're gonna end up soaked and full of a cold. We might just be getting worked up over nothing. Stephen probably had a nosebleed and took the dog for a walk without washing his hands. Let me go in there and make sure. I bet it's not the first time he's gone out and not closed the door behind him."

Jack took the keys. "Someone is in there and that is NOT my daughter or grandson's voice!"

"Well, you don't hear them yelling do you? Someone sheltering form the storm likely came on and found Alice off trying to find Stephen leaving the place unlocked" Jim tried to smile. "Won't take me a minute."

He waited for Jack to walk back to the car, watching the slumped shoulders of a dejected man walk the fifteen yards to where the cruiser was parked.

Dark clouds covered the sky. In the distance, giant redwoods reached up to them, their majesty unparalleled in the California landscape. Sheets of rain pulsed down on Jim as he watched Jack take a seat in the car, his face ashen with stress and fear.

He turned toward the house. He could not see or sense movement inside, but the atmosphere wasn't right. Call it cop's instinct, but he just _knew_ something bad was waiting for him behind that door. He drew his gun and held it at his hip in his left hand. He glanced back at the cruiser to make sure Jack didn't try to follow him into the house. He remained seated in the marked car, his eyes pleading with Jim that everything would be okay.

Except both men knew, in their hearts, that it wouldn't.

Jim steeled himself for what was about to happen.

He reached out tentatively with his right hand and pushed the door open slowly. Any attempt at a stealthy entrance was immediately thwarted by the rusted hinges. They cried out as though they were in pain, and Jim winced at the sound.

He couldn't creep in and search the house now. He would have to just get in there, and if someone _did_ rush him he'd just have to shoot the crazy sonofabitch before he could get the first blow in.

"Alice, are you in here?" he called out as he stepped into the small hallway. The door to the living room was closed, but there was something on the floor.

Something sticky. Sheriff Jim Hoolihan looked down. It was blood. He was standing in a pool of blood.

It had started to congeal and was the color of deepest red, so deep in fact, that it was almost black. In it he could make out footprints. Like the handprint on the door, they were child-sized. He could also make out something else in the thick pool in the hallway. There were other prints. Paw prints.

"Hello?" came the voice again "Please? Here, in here. Hurry damn it!"

He thought that when he opened the door to the living room, he would find Alice Carter murdered, but, looking at the prints in the drying blood, he didn't think he would find Stephen Carter inside the house.

Or the dog, Janet.

..

.

.

When Jim reappeared at the door of the house, he was looking down at the ground. Jack didn't know why, not right away. He looked up after scanning the area around the door, and Jack knew instantly that there was not going to be any good news.

The previous night, Alice Carter had thought nothing was right in her life. She had been thinking about her mother's death and the time her father had been spending at Cooper's Diner. She had been correct: nothing _was_ right in Torchwood Isles. On this crazy Monday in February, Torchwood Isles had been turned upside down. Now, Alice Carter had gone to be with her mother, wherever that might be.

What Jack saw in the sheriff 's face, even from fifteen yards away, was horror. He got out of the car and stood in the rain, fumbling in his pocket for his cigarettes without thinking about it, as Jim approached.

"I'm sorry Jack," he said. "There's no easy way to say this, so I'm just gonna say it. Alice's been murdered."He reached out a hand and placed it on Jack's shoulder as he saw his face collapse into grief. Jack pulled away from his touch.

"What about the kid? What about little Stephen?"

"Looks like his handprint on the door, but he's not inside. There's footprints leading from the hallway out of the house. I'm surprised I didn't notice them on the way in."

"Footprints?" Jack asked.

"Yeah," Jim replied. "It's Alice's blood, Jack. I'm sorry. But at least it means Stephen got away. Looks like the dog went with him, because I saw paw prints too."

"Sounds to me like the damn dog is useless," Jack said. Tears mixed with the rain on his cheeks, but anger overwhelmed his voice.

Someone came to the doorway of the house and Jack bolted, Jim turning to see Ianto stumbling into the light and he cursed knowing Jack would get the wrong end of the stick as he powered towards the blood covered man.

"Jack! NO!"

It was at that moment that they heard the call from the craft two miles away. The grief-stricken Harkness was struggling in the wind and swirling rain as Ianto ran over to grab him and shout that they needed to hide. Jim was holstering his gun.

It echoed through the trees, sounding like a herd of elephants that were ready to stampede.

"What in sweet Jesus's name was that?" Jim cried, his head whipping back to look up at the cloudy sky above.

Jack froze as he looked at the man who seemed to be looking into his very soul.

The sky swelled and cracked overhead as the UFO appeared.

It hovered motionless above their heads, thirty-five feet above the house.

Now he remembered. He didn't know how anyone could possibly forget such a sight, but he had. He didn't know how long he had stood gaping at it the previous night, but it had been there, it had stopped his watch at the stroke of midnight, and it had taken away two hours of his life that he could have spent with his daughter. His now dead daughter.

now dead daughter.

It was stunning. Jim was scared right out of his goddamned mind. He'd seen it in the movies, but it wasn't something he expected to ever see in the flesh. This was what had been making the sounds earlier in the day, and the actuality of what it was left him spellbound.

It was directly overhead where they stood, rings of blue light flashing around its edge. Rain no longer hit the upturned faces of the two men as they stared at the huge metallic-looking object humming above them. It was so big and so low that it was blocking the clouds.

"What do they want?" Jim muttered under his breath, more to himself than Jack.

"Don't speak!" Ianto hissed as he held both men's hands, staring up at it.

Jack didn't answer. His grief was replaced by fear and incredulity, and he couldn't take his eyes off it as he waited to see what would happen next.

As they stared up at it, bright red lights replaced the blue ones on the underside of the craft, pulsing rhythmically. _On something as big as this, there must be hundreds of thousands of them_ , Jim thought.

They narrowed, heading away from the edges of the craft and toward the centre, before rotating with increasing speed. The two men managed to take their eyes off the craft long enough to glance at each other. As they retrained their eyes on it, the beam came down. The Harkness house was gone. Gone with the evidence of the murder of Alice Carter, as was Alice's body itself. The house seemed to shatter like glass, exploding into a dust that fanned out over the clearing then settling. Obliterated.

The beam retreated back toward the craft. As it went, the lights changed from red to a spectrum of colours. Ianto dropped their hands and started to run.

"We gotta move, Jack," Jim said. "Only trouble is, I don't know where we can move _to_ that's gonna keep us safe from that thing." His eyes remained focused on the ship.

Jack didn't have much of a clue either. He knew he was in mortal danger – sensed it in every sinew – but he didn't _want_ to move. He wanted to stare at the thing for a hundred years.

Then it made the noise again.

It was the noise they had heard carry across the forest from two miles away. Except this time, it was right above them, and it was _loud_.

"Get in the car," Ianto commanded as he yelled at them, still running for his life towards the cruiser.

Jack jumped back into the cruiser. Jim did the Same and jammed the key into the ignition.

"Wait, what about Stephen?" Jack said.

"He's not here, gotta get out of here before that thing vanishes _us_."

The sheriff twisted the key in the ignition. Nothing happened.

The lights on the craft glittered like a fiber-optic Christmas tree above.

"But he's all I've got. I can't leave him."

"He's not here, Jack," Jim yelled. "Come on." He banged the wheel in frustration. "This car's not taking us anywhere. Let's go."

Jim grabbed the wind-up radio and jumped out of the car. Jack followed suit.

"Into the woods," Jim shouted, trying to make himself heard over the hum emanating from the huge glittering craft above. "That's where Stephen's gotta be."

Jack nodded, and they ran through the bare land where the house had been.

Alice was gone, the house was gone.


	12. Gwen's head

Gwen's head ached. She'd been on her way to buy bread from Ellen Shawcross's store, walking along Main Street with a big carefree smile on her face. Then, _BOOM_ , out of nowhere, something had completely totalled her. She had no clue what it was at first, as she tried to blink away the stinging blood that was streaming into her eyes.

She had thought, fleetingly, that someone had thrown a rock at her. There were plenty of women in Torchwood Isles that disliked her plunging cleavage and the way their husbands looked at her when they were at Cooper's Diner. Rhys as a toy boy lover seemed to have calmed them recenty though. Then the madness had begun. Thousands of birds raining from the sky. _Hello, Alfred Hitchcock_ , she had thought through what Doctor Harper would an hour later tell her was a severe concussion from the blow the dead bird had struck.

Doctor Harper had watched from his office, right in the centre of Main Street, as the bird had dropped from the sky. It had been like watching in slow motion as it plummeted, heading right for Gwen Cooper. He had jumped up to run to the door and shout out a warning, but of course it was too late. It was a large bird, and for a second he wondered if it just might kill her.

It hadn't, but she'd been pretty groggy at first. Bob Grady had been second on the scene, and they had carried her into his furniture store, braving the birds that continued to fall, and lain her down on a couch. Doctor Harper held a cushion to the wound to stem the bleeding, while Grady fetched a first aid kit from the back of the store.

They had stopped the bleeding and cleaned the wound, before Doctor Harper had wrapped Gwen's head tightly with a bandage. They called Rhys over from the grocery store and he came running, dodging birds with horror. They couldn't take her to the Lawton hospital, because the birds were still hammering down from the sky above, so they had waited it out inside the store.

Brett Fishwick had just about finished delivering the mail to Main Street when the birdstorm hit. He had dodged into the open doorway of Carl Sweeney's bar, the Bawdy Bear, for safety.

"We're closed," Carl had called out from his position under the bar, where he was sorting glasses into groupings by their size.

"Carl, it's me, Brett Fishwick," Brett had called out.

"Oh, okay Brett. Just leave the mail on the bar, will ya?"

"No, Carl, I ain't got any mail. Come up, you gotta see this."

Carl Sweeney had come around the bar to the open doorway, and gaped at the sight before him. He had heard of instances where a hundred birds had fallen out of the sky, but this was starting to look like thousands piling up along Main Street.

Owen came out to watch too, then saw someone running from the tree line.

.

.

.

.

"What now?" Jack asked.

The sheriff 's brow was furrowed as he stared off into the trees.

For now, at least, they were sheltered under the canopy of firs. Only a few drops of rain found them from above. "I think we should head east, toward the bottom of the Brow," he said after deliberating for a full minute.

Jack Harkness had only one thing on his mind. Stephen.

"How're we gonna find him, Jim?"

"He's probably in these woods, Same as us. I figure we need to see what's going on down in town, but to do that we need to get up high. That means going up to Key Brow, but I'm not sure whether I want to do that."

"Why not?" Jack examined Jim with puffy, exhausted eyes. Ianto silently watched the interaction, not caring where they went if they could just bloody go _somewhere_ already.

"Well, my priority, like yours, is to find Stephen. Like I say, I reckon he must be in the woods, but I don't know for sure. I don't think someone's taken him, because I didn't see any footprints other than Stephen's and the dog's. What's the dog called?"

"Janet, he's Janet," Jack replied.

"Well, I'm not too keen on going all the way to the top of the Brow. I'd sooner be as far away from those damn flying saucers as I can get, and I don't want to risk being seen by breaking our cover."

A stiff breeze swept through the branches high above.

"Let's walk east in the direction of the Brow. Hopefully we'll find Stephen and Janet on the way," Jim said. "If we think it's safe we'll go up to the top of the Brow and see whether the rest of town looks all right. That sound like a fair plan to you?"

Ianto remained silent as they walked alongside the river.

.

.

.

.

Gwen wrapped a jacket around the shoulders of the boy. His wide eyes stared through her, and he stood completely still, his arms at his side.

Rhys was keeping his distance. He had thrown the towel he'd been folding back onto the ground and sat down on it. The black Labrador was sitting next to him. It panted as he stroked its back, and when his hand went up to its head he felt the blood matting in its fur. It was definitely in much better shape than the kid was though.

"Are you hurt?" Gwen asked the boy. She received no response.

"What's your name?"

Again, no response. The boy was obviously traumatized by whatever had happened to him. He was covered in what could only be blood. His clothes, from his cotton sweater to his blue jeans, were stained so badly they looked like a bad tie-dye experiment.

"What are we gonna do, Rhys?" Gwen was frightened; _really_ frightened. They had come to a place they thought would be tranquil and beautiful. Instead of that they had found a place where something very weird was happening. Giant UFOs in the sky, strange noises, and now a little boy, covered in blood but seemingly uninjured.

"I don't know, Gwennie," Rhys replied. "There's no way we can leave now, not with this guy to take care of. The others have the right idea going to their cellars."

"Yeah, but how do we take care of him?" The boy remained still and silent throughout their exchange. He looked no older than ten to Gwen, and he could have been a statue, such was his stillness in the clearing.

"We need to find a cop is how," Rhys said, standing and going to the boy, closely followed by the dog. "Kid, talk to me. What happened to you?"

Again, no response.

The dog began to whine, nudging at his young master's hand, which automatically turned to open up the palm. The dog licked the kid's palm, and Rhys felt bad at the wave of disgust that went through him at the thought of the dog licking what might be human blood off the boy's hand.

Gwen knelt on one knee in front of the child. A glimpse of arse poked from the top of her jeans, and Rhys forced his focus away from the pale skin and back to the boy.

"Can you talk to us?"Gwen asked. "Can you tell me your name?"

The boy remained silent.

"Come on Gwen, let's just pack this stuff away, then we can find the cop shop. There's not much we can do to help him if he can't tell us what's wrong. Besides, that cut on your head is still bad."

Gwen's head whipped round in response to the tone in Rhys' voice. She forced her own to sound calm and relaxed. "Rhys, the kid's right here. Leave the leftovers. Just grab the takings, okay?"

"Okay, Okay," Rhys replied, "I'm sorry."

He hadn't meant to sound like he didn't care. He did care; a whole lot as a matter of fact.

He couldn't imagine what had happened to leave the kid so covered with blood and so scared he couldn't speak. He wasn't injured, but someone obviously was. Maybe his mother lay in a car wreck somewhere, bleeding to death as they dithered trying to figure out what to do for the best. No, not a car wreck. The boy might have been protected by a seat belt, but the dog certainly wouldn't have, and the shiny black coat of the Labrador didn't appear to be covering a single scratch. But if it wasn't a car wreck that caused the young boy to be covered in blood, perhaps it was something else. Something entirely more sinister.

Gwen was anxious to get moving. Get the kid to a warm place where he felt secure, and get him reunited with his family. "Let's just get in the van and get going. We can come back later."

The boy hadn't moved so much as a muscle. When a huge drop of rain fell from a leaf high above and rolled directly down his face, he didn't raise a hand to wipe it away. It rolled down his cheek like a teardrop. And he hadn't made eye contact with either of them; just stared off into the trees. They needed to move.

"Okay, let's go." Rhys shouldered his backpack and headed for the vehicle.


	13. seeking

"Come on," Gwen coaxed. She didn't lay a hand on him in case it spooked him even more. Instead, she walked over to the van and slid open the door, before gesturing with a swoosh of the hand that was meant to show the boy what he was supposed to do.

The kid didn't move. Rhys walked over and patted the top of his right leg. "Come on, Buster," he called to the dog. The Labrador looked from the boy to them, then back to the boy again, before trotting over and jumping onto the back seat of the van.

Finally, a flicker shone in the boy's dulled eyes and he turned his head to point in the direction of the dog. "His name is Janet," he said, and walked to the vehicle.

Gwen and Rhys exchanged a glance that reflected their relief at finally seeing some life in the kid, who ducked his head and sat on the back seat of the van, next to the dog.

Gwen slid the door shut, before jumping into the front passenger fished a bunch of keys from his pocket and got behind the wheel.

Rhys jammed the key in the ignition as Gwen reached for her seatbelt. He turned the key. Nothing. Completely dead. Not even a chug or a splutter.

"Shit," he exclaimed.

" _Rhys_ ," Gwen admonished, her eyes darting to the left to remind Rhys that they had a child in the van.

"Sorry. Looks like the starter died. I don't think we're gonna be driving anywhere in this van."

"Try again," Gwen said. This couldn't be happening, not now.

"There's no point, it's..."

"Try again," Gwen interrupted, leaving him in no doubt that the best thing to do would be to go along with her request, even if it were just to humour her.

Rhys turned the key in the ignition again. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

"It's no good, Gwennie. It's not gonna start."

A low whine issued from behind them.

"So now what?" Gwen asked.

"We need to walk, we need to get to the Police station."

Gwen didn't feel like it was going to be fine. The noises in the sky had been so huge that they had made her feel like a very small, insignificant object. The dead birds everywhere, that had been too gross to describe. The weather sucked, and now they had this innocent child to care for. A traumatized little kid, and Gwen suddenly didn't feel much older than the kid was.

She turned herself around in her seat to look into the kid's eyes.

"Do you think you can walk?" she asked.

"He's gonna have to," Rhys said.

"Shut up, Rhys," Gwen said through clenched teeth.

The child's eyes were focused on her now; that was something to be grateful for. She thought she saw an almost imperceptible nod from the boy. Deep down, she knew Rhys was right. The kid _would_ have to walk. There was no way they could carry him back to the diner, and she didn't think the dog would take too kindly to having the boy dumped on its back; the diner was at least a mile away from the police station.

Gwen released her grip on the seatbelt and stepped out of the van. Rhys got out the driver's side and stood leaning on the door, his chin resting on his folded arms.

"Come on, kid," Gwen said as she slid open the door, and was surprised when he got out of the van at the first time of asking. The dog followed suit, jumping out and standing at his young master's side. Rhys joined them and they began to walk. They didn't know it yet, but it was to be a journey of over five hundred miles.

.

.

.

"Just stop here for a minute," Jack said. He was out of breath. The two and a half miles they had journeyed through the undergrowth had all been uphill to this point. They had reached Woodview Road, a two-lane stretch of blacktop that led away almost six miles to the Clifton Center.

"Okay, Jack. Are you all right?"

"Just need to catch my breath, and my knees are aching," Jack replied. "Damn arthritis." He leaned against a thick Sol 3 Douglas fir that reached up two hundred feet.

Above them, the sky was silent. The men were entirely grateful for this. They knew it was unlikely to last – they had seen enough to understand that the ships must be here for a reason – but it was welcome respite for the two men who had suddenly begun to feel every one of their years catching up with them.

"Right, we'd better get moving," Jack said. "Can't stand here all night; we gotta find Stephen."

The sun's glow was beginning to fade as it disappeared beyond a horizon they couldn't see.

"I'm sure glad we have this." Jim held out the wind-up radio, pointing to the flashlight on its side. They didn't need it just yet, and granted it was no substitute for a proper flashlight, but it was certainly better than figuring their way through the dense woods ahead of them without anything to light the way.

"Right, let's stay close to one another," Jack said. "We've gotta cross Woodview, and we don't know what's waiting for us when we step out of these trees."

Jim nodded, and the men followed him toward the road, keeping a couple of trees between themselves and the possibility of being seen from above.

"I don't see anything," Jack whispered. The men huddled together at the foot of another giant Douglas fir.

"Shall we make a run for it?" Jim hissed.

"Let's just wait a second, can you hear it?" Ianto said, and the men remained still, listening to each other's breathing, while they listened for anything else that would serve as a warning to them to be cautious about racing out across the road.

A hum resonated through the trees, and both men gasped as a green beam swept along the road in front of them. It covered the width of the road entirely, and they watched as it raced smoothly away from them and out of sight. Ianto did not blink, knowing the strange feeling in his head was not just distracting him, but clearly those seeking them were confused as well. They had just missed them completely.

"Well, they're still up there," Jim said, "and looks like they're watching the roads. That's gotta be a bad sign, because it means they're going nowhere."

"Which means they're here for a reason," Jack whispered. "I'd hate to get caught under that damn beam. God knows what would happen to you."

"I don't know, Jack. It didn't do anything other than feel its way down the road. It had to be looking for people, but so far the only person it's touched was already dead, as far as we know." Ianto whispered.

Jack studied Ianto's features in the dimming light. Shadows played across his face, making his expression difficult to read. Jack didn't think he looked scared - more like pensive – and maybe he was right about the ships not having done anything to living people. It was like he knew something, maybe felt something. Maybe this man was empathic? Could he hear that scratching noise in the back of his skull too?

Jim was glad as hell that Jack hadn't fallen to pieces after the murder of his only daughter, but he knew that all this could change, especially if they were unable to find Jack's grandson or worse, if they found him dead in the woods like they'd found Earl Buckley's two kids when he had gone mad.

"They sure as hell affected the wildlife, though, didn't they?" Jack spoke in a whisper, but it was an indignant whisper, laced with defiant anger.

"Well yeah, I guess so. I haven't heard anything wild in the forest since we've been moving. But the only thing I've seen that's dead is birds. If the other animals had been killed by the radiation, or whatever, then we would have seen them." Jim surmised and again Jack watched Ianto.

"Perhaps the other animals sensed they were in danger and ran," Jack said, "and you saw Janet's tracks at the house?"

"Yeah," Jim replied. "That's a good point. My guess is that the dog made those tracks _after_ the birds fell from the sky."

"You can bet your bottom dollar that the dog won't run." Jack said. "It's hardly left his side since he brought it home five years ago."

"Well, the beam hasn't come back. You wanna make a run for it?" Jim gestured toward the road.

Jack thought about Stephen, alone except for the dog, frightened and freezing somewhere amongst the vast fir and redwoods that bordered Torchwood Isles, probably on the other side of Woodview.

"Yeah," he said, "let's go."

It was now or never, and the men, without hesitation, ran out into the middle of the road, and right into Rhys, Gwen, Stephen, and Janet, the black Labrador.


	14. where jack's party came from

_**half an hour earlier** _

The last of the dappled light sought its way through the high branches of the trees, filtering down to the three forlorn men as they walked beside the Obama River. Light but steady rain continued to fall.

Jack shivered. "We're gonna have to get across soon," he said, "or we're just adding to how far we gotta walk when we get to the other side."

The river didn't look deep to Ianto, but its threat was definitely not benign. He was almost as scared of the river as his companions were of the ships above. The current flowed wildly over the rocks that hid below the surface, their appearance masked by the water as it foamed over them, downhill through the forest of fir and redwoods.

"What are we gonna do, Jack, swim across?" Ianto asked.

Jack sighed. "Man, I could sure do with a smoke right about now."

His cigarettes, like his cell phone, were behind them as thy tried to make more space between them and the ships.

"Them things are bad for you," Jim said. "Maybe Rhys will give you one of his if we can find them."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Jack replied. "There's about as much chance of the kid giving me a cigarette as there is of one of them flying saucers sending down a beam of fire to light it for me."

Ianto remained silent throughout their exchange. Things were bad enough without this whining, and he felt a certain amount of resentment toward him that he found hard to explain. Maybe it was the self assured walk that reminded him of Jaccob, or the fact he clearly has empathic abilities and had tried a couple of times to breach his walls. Of course, he couldn't. No one could. If Ianto had come away with anything from his time with that maniac it was the knowledge that he had power after all. In the end he had blocked Jaccob and he was effectively blocking this. Those. Them … whatever they were.

He wondered if he should separate from these two, they might bring attention but there was something about this infuriating ex-soldier that had Ianto hesitating. The scratching at him was tentative but it also opened the door back. Jack clearly did not know this. To knock on a door means to open your own and Ianto could see glimpses of something …familiar.

Jack was damaged too.

They walked on through the rain.

"Wait," Jim said abruptly, "what's that?" His brow creased as his head tilted back slightly, and all three men stopped dead in their tracks. Above them, a low hum began to swell.

"Just keep moving," Jack said. "Fuck the sky." He shoved his hands into his damp pockets and continued on, stepping over the carcasses of birds as he went, his boots muddied to the ankles.

"You think they're back, don't you?" Ianto asked Jim.

"I'm not sure they ever went away, Ianto. I think maybe they were always watching."

"But why now? Why choose now to come and invade the planet? If that's what they're doing." For the first time since it all began, Ianto wondered about what they couldn't see. Were these ships everywhere? Were there thousands of them in the skies above earth, come to take over the planet and maybe even wipe out mankind? It was a scenario straight out of a science fiction movie, but they were here. That much none of them could deny.

"Guys, quick, come here," Jack cried. His figure had become a darkened shadow as he'd walked ahead of Ianto and Jim.

"What is it, Jack?" Jim yelled as he and Ianto ran along the riverbank.

"We got ourselves a goddam bridge," Jack cried, a note of glee in his voice that was hard to miss. Sure enough, nature had provided them with a bridge to cross the Obama River, and right at the point at which it narrowed to about fifteen feet across. It was a young redwood, about fifty feet in length that had been uprooted and had fallen directly across the raging river. It had fallen in such a way that it lay away from them, its leafy head well over the opposite bank. It would still be difficult to get across, Ianto knew that; the bark was rough and offshoots of sharp branches lined its length.

"Who's going first?" Jack asked. He took a step back from the riverbank.

"I don't care. I'll go first," Ianto said.

"No, I'm the Police," Jim shouted over the roar of the river's torrent. "It's my duty to protect you, so I'll go across first and make sure it's steady enough for you two to get over. Also, I'm the biggest out of us, so I'll give it a better test." He patted his bulging waistline, but he didn't feel much like joking. He wanted to be home with his wife.

"Sounds good to me," Jack said.

The hum in the air remained consistent around them. There was no ship in sight through the treetops though, and the immediacy and danger of the roaring river meant that none of them paid attention to the hum that cloaked the woods.

"Right," Jim said, "I'm gonna sit on the tree, so if you two could hold the end, put some weight on it to make sure it doesn't roll, and I'll try to shuffle across."

He stooped and tucked each trouser leg into his black socks to stop them snagging on the young redwood's branches, before climbing onto the slippery bridge. Ianto and Jack placed themselves at either side, exerting pressure on the fallen tree as Jim began to half shuffle, half drag himself along, doing his best to ignore the biting pain in his palm.

"Feels steady," he said, and began to move more quickly. Within a minute he had made it halfway. Jack and Ianto held their breath as Jim passed the halfway point and started thinking about getting to the other side. Four feet below him, the water rolled and raged, carrying away everything in its path.

"Don't look down," Ianto called out.

"I got no intention to," Jim yelled back. He trained his eyes on the bark of the tree just ahead of where he shuffled, ripping off the young branches and letting them drop into the river below, to be carried away along with the birds that had fallen into the water earlier that morning.

The hum around them intensified, and Jack cast a weary glance at the treetops high above. When he looked back at the river, Jim was standing on the other side, brushing dirt from the seat of his pants.

"That wasn't so bad," he called over the crashing river. "Seems pretty well anchored and stable so take it easy and you'll be fine."

Ianto turned to Jack. "Want me to go next?"

"You betcha," Jack replied.

Ianto was able to shuffle his way across a lot more quickly than Peter had, mainly due to being smaller and lighter than the big deputy, and thanks to the larger man clearing the offshoots of branches from the fallen tree. Within a minute he had dragged his young frame across the makeshift bridge, and both men waited on the other side while Jack sought the courage to make the short journey and join them.

Heights.

Since the War he hated heights, jumping from high flying Hovers is what fucked his body. Damn it all.

He sat on the rough bark and edged out at a painfully slow pace, all the time staring down into the water below. Through the fading light, Ianto could see the look of consternation bordering bewilderment on Jack's face, and he called out "Don't look down, Jack, you'll be fine. You're almost halfway."

It was then that they saw the green beam for the first time. It came seemingly from nowhere, reaching across the treetops and filtering down through them. Jack scrambled along the fallen tree, terrified that the beam would take him or pulverize him or whatever green beams from alien ships did to a person. He dragged himself along wildly as the beam felt its way along the riverbank and found the uprooted redwood.

"Jack, hurry," Jim called.

"I'm going as fast as I..." He tilted, first to the right, and then back to the left as he tried desperately to regain his balance, and then he was falling, away from the searching beam and into the river. In a flash the beam disintegrated, and Jack flailed in the water below, scrabbling to get his feet on the bottom and gasping at the ice-cold torrent that threatened to carry him away.

His feet found some purchase on the slippery rocks beneath the surface, and he propelled himself forward and into the reach of Ianto's outstretched arms, the man putting his own survival on the line to save Jack's life.

As fast as he had fallen in he was out, gasping and panting for breath, drenched with freezing water for the second time in an hour. He hugged his knees to his chest and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to stop his teeth from knocking together.

"What now?" Ianto asked. They had made it across the river, but at a cost. He knew Jack was at serious risk from taking a dip in the Obama River.

"If we can get to Gwen's place we can dry off and get Jack warmed up. Then maybe we can stay there for the night and worry about getting to town in the morning. Check out the news and see what the Prime Minister plans on doing to help us out."

Ianto nodded. It was the only plan they had, but he knew Jim was making assumptions. The first of those assumptions was that Gwen's place was still there.

The second was that the Prime Minister of Great Britain let along the President of the United States was still alive.

They turned towards the point where they were to meet up with Gwen's party.


	15. together now

Gwen and Rhys' hearts leaped up into their throats as the men rushed out of the descending darkness and almost scared them to death them on the two-lane road. Before either of them could protest, one of the men had grabbed the kid in an embrace.

"Oh, thank God," Jack Harkness cried as he scooped up his grandson. "Are you okay?"

He received no answer from the boy. Janet buzzed around his feet, the whole back half of his body wagging from side to side.

"We need to get under cover," Jim said, ushering the group to the side of the road from which Gwen, Rhys, the boy and the dog had appeared. He knew that a beam could spiral from the sky at any second – the humming buzz permanently cloaked the woods now – and whether the beam was red or green or whatever, he didn't want to be standing exposed to it when it _did_ arrive.

Once the group had cover under the trees, Jack asked Jim for his wind-up radio and shone the flashlight in Stephen's direction, being careful not to aim the weak beam directly into his eyes. The sight of his bloody, filthy clothes broke his heart. It was the blood of his daughter, and he clicked the flashlight on the wind-up radio off before handing it back to Jim.

"I'm Gwen, this is Rhys," Gwen said, and offered a hand which Ianto ignored. After a few seconds she let her hand fall to her side, not so much annoyed as she was embarrassed.

"I'm Ianto, and this is Jack. Jack is Stephen's grandfather. I tihnk you know Jim"

"Oh, right, okay I didn't know he was Jack's," Rhys said. "So what's the deal with all the blood?"

Gwen kicked his ankle.

"Ow, Babe." Rhys groaned at the kick, the reason for which was not apparent to him.

Jack knelt in front of Stephen. "Kid, talk to me. Are you okay?"

The boy looked through his grandfather without any recognition of who he was.

"He's only spoken once since we found him," Rhys said, trying to make up for whatever his indiscretion had been.

Jack got to his feet. "What did he say?"

"He told us the dog is called Janet," Gwen said. "But that was all, nothing else."

Jack turned to Jim. The sheriff fiddled with the radio, winding the small handle that extended from the back. Jack, Gwen and Rhys watched him in the fading light, Gwen tipping her head back and pulling her hair into a tight pony tail. Ianot watched the sky.

Jim turned the radio around and clicked it on. He heard nothing but static on CV-FM, and turned the dial slowly until an almost ghostly voice began to issue from the small speaker. He edged the dial further, even more delicately, until it became clearer, and extended the silver aerial, pointing it at the treetops overhead.

" _...on high alert as they continue to monitor the situation for developments._

_The crisis began early today. The residents we managed to speak to said there were noises, loud noises, in the sky above. Then the fall of thousands of dead birds onto Torchwood Isles. At around 4 p.m., hree large craft became visible over the Camber Valley, each bigger than any manmade airborne vessel ever seen, and then gigantic red beams were seen issuing from the ships in quick succession, obliterating everything below them. Torchwood Isles and Lawton, along with all of their residents, seem to have disappeared..."_

" _...You said disappeared, Johnny, but what of our reporter who made it into Torchwood Isles?..."_

" _...So far we have been unable to contact him, Larry. As far as we can tell, the ship zapped him too..."_

Jim clicked the radio off. He sighed heavily. "The whole town, and Lawton too," he mumbled. "This I gotta see."

"What do we do now?" Gwen asked. She wanted to get the boy to shelter and out of the rain and the cold, not stand in the woods listening to the radio. She was in a serious situation, of that she was in no doubt, but if she could keep the boy safe then maybe she could get through it and out the other side.

It was a feeling that was alien to her – she had always thought kids were annoying, but now that she had one to protect, well, that made things different. A lot different. She moved nearer to Stephen.

"We're gonna head to Key Brow," Jim said. "We gotta check out that what the man on the radio said is true. If it is, and Torchwood Isles and Lawton are gone, then we're gonna have to figure out how to get away from the ships." He was thinking of his wife, Maria, and the dinner date at The Swan that would now never be. His last words to her had been "I love you" and he was thankful for that. She had wanted him to retire before his luck ran out. Seemed to Jim that maybe everyone's luck, and time, was running out.

If he believed the radio, Maria was gone, along with everybody else in Torchwood Isles and Lawton.

Jack knelt in front of the boy again and placed an arm around his shoulder. He had lost his daughter, Stephen had lost his mom, but they still had each other, and Janet lay at his feet, panting his dog breath over Jack and Stephen. Jack didn't care; he was almost as glad to see the dog as he was to see his grandson.

"How far is Key Brow?"Rhys asked, risking a kick or a dark stare through the twilight from Gwen.

"Couple of miles," Jim replied.

Rhys opted to remain silent over grumbling.

"Okay, let's get moving," Jack said.

The group began to walk along a trail carved out of the undergrowth by many thousands of feet before theirs, Janet walking close to Stephen on one side, Jack holding his hand on the other. Gwen walked close behind, drawn to the boy and desperate to keep him safe. Up ahead, Jim and Rhys led the way, the sheriff pointing the flashlight on the wind-up radio into the trees ahead. Ianto some distance behind as per usual. Wraithing.

"Watch your step, son," Jim said.

"Okay," Rhys replied. "Sure is some weird shi...I mean stuff going on round here."

"You got that right. From what the radio man said, my whole town and the next one over is gone, and none of us even know who or what these things are or why they're here."

"Yeah," Rhys replied, "but there's something I can't work out."

Jim paused, allowing the others to catch up. "What's that, son?"

"Well, if your town and the next one over have been wiped out, then why are we still standing here now? Why weren't we zapped too?"

"That's a good question," Jack said to Ianto as they followed at the rear of the group. They started to walk again, darkness hemming them in on both sides. The weak beam of the flashlight filtered through a couple of feet of the darkness ahead and they followed it.

"Perhaps there _is_ a reason we weren't zapped too," Gwen said as she walked a little closer to Jack.

The group of came into a clearing in the forest.

"Holy..." Jim said, cutting himself off mid-curse so that Stephen didn't have to hear it. The valley below was empty. Houses...stores...the church even, just gone!

"I guess the radio man was right," Jack said.

"What?" Gwen asked.

Rhys looked at Gwen. She was peering off into the sky, rain pattering against her upturned face. While she was obviously more worried about the boy than about herself, Rhys was worried about her. It was cold, and getting colder.

"So, what happens after we get to where we're going?" Ianto asked.

"Well, son," Jim replied, "I guess I don't really know. We're gonna have to work that one out when we get there. I'd say we need to keep moving for now though, else we're apt to freeze out here."

"Agreed," Jack said. He was positioned a couple of feet away, one hand on each of Stephen's shoulders. Dim moonlight cast a pallid light on the kid's face, and to Rhys he looked like a zombie.

Jim wound the handle on the radio/flashlight and its beam brightened.

"Can you walk, Stephen, or would you like me to carry you?" Jack asked his grandson.

He received no answer. This was bad. Stephen was traumatized literally beyond words. Jack wondered if he'd witnessed his mother's murder at the hands of Earl Buckley. He thought not; Buckley would surely have killed him too; he'd had no qualms about killing his own kids. Janet stood next to Stephen. Now, as the moon's pale light faded behind a cloud, the black Labrador began to walk. Jim pointed the flashlight after the dog. When it got to be ten feet away, the group began to follow, Jack taking hold of Stephen's small hand.

"Jan," Jack called out. He felt Stephen's grip tighten at the abbreviation of the dog's name. That was good. "Janet," he called out, "wait up boy."

The group walked quickly to catch up with the dog. They walked parallel to Brow Point Pass. The path ran alongside the road, but far enough back that they wouldn't be exposed if a beam was to reach down seeking their presence from above.

Each of them knew the huge craft were in the vicinity, as the humming around them penetrated their skulls and vibrated through their bodies. It charged the air like an electrical current. Like they would get a shock if they were to touch anything.

It took them almost an hour to travel three-quarters of the way up Brow Point Pass. Gwen stayed as close as possible to Stephen. Jack stayed closer. Janet continued to lead them, sniffing at the undergrowth and a couple of times lifting his muzzle and sniffing the air as they went. Rhys and Jim walked fast in an attempt to keep up with the dog. Twice Rhys slipped. The second time he fell down, landing painfully on his ass like Jack had the previous night. It had been only twenty-four hours before, but twenty-four hours seemed like a lifetime ago to all who walked through the darkened woods surrounding the place where Torchwood Isles had stood. Ianto seemed to glide like a silent wraith and more than once Jack glanced at him with interest as he found those shields slammed so lard that it was like looking at concrete.

He reminded him of his old commander.

He had been a Level 1 too.


	16. the one extra is still behind them

It was around 8 p.m. when the call came from the ships again.

It filled the air around them, syrupy as it oozed through the cloudy sky above. They had all heard it before, but it still unnerved them.

Rhys clapped his hands over his ears as the call reverberated around them. Jack let go of Stephen's small hand and ducked like the sky was about to fall in on him. Gwen trembled and moved closer still to Stephen's side, placing a reassuring hand on the boy's shoulder. Jim handled it best. Ianto stood mutely watching as he shielded with all his might.

"Come on," Jim said, "we're almost there."

"I wish the rain would let up," Rhys said.

On the contrary, the rain fell more heavily as they reached the higher ground. By the time they found the top of Key Brow it swirled around them.

The group huddled together, exposed to a gusting wind in the clearing.

"So, what are we supposed to see?" Rhys asked. Below them was darkness.

"Rhys," Gwen said, "if you don't stop complaining I'm going to punch your lights out."

"Well I don't think the flashlight beam is going to reach all the way from here to the valley floor," Rhys replied.

"Calm down, son," Jim said, "I don't think it'll need to." He gestured to their left. The adults turned. The ships moved across the sky overhead, magnificent in their hugeness, the millions of lights twinkling and changing colour, rippling through spectrums on their vast undersides. Aquamarine pulsed like a heartbeat in the centre of the craft, matched by spinning lengths of light near the edge of the huge vessels. Gwen's jaw dropped open. She shielded her eyes from the whipping rain as she peered at the sight above her. Rhys' jaw wasn't far behind. He had caught a glimpse of one the ships as it flashed overhead earlier in the day. Now, he was looking at two of the giant UFOs, and feeling very tiny and very insignificant in the shadow of the huge disc-shaped objects.

Jack clutched his grandson's shoulders and held him tightly.

"Janet, sit," he said sharply. The black Labrador did as it was told. Stephen remained completely still, his eyes fixed ahead. The craft hummed across the valley, the bright lights pulsing on their undersides. At the midway point between Lawton and Torchwood Isles they gradually slowed until they came to a halt. As the group on the brow watched, rain poured from the edges of the metallic looking craft like huge waterfalls. Steam rose from the rain as it cascaded from the edges of the ships and fell into the night.

"See that?" Jack whispered. "The rain is hot coming off those things."

"Yeah, I see it," Jim wasn't so much afraid as he was in awe of the size of the things. Side by side they covered about a mile of the sky above the valley.

The brightness of the light from the two vessels lit up the land beneath them, and they saw what they had come to see. Black earth filled the void that had once been Torchwood Isles and Lawton. Every building was gone, and all that was left was the Obama River, the roads and the bridges mapping the terrain that had once been the home of more than four thousand people.

The lights blinked out and then returned soundlessly, back to their original array of colours, as the discs slowly moved south away from the group.

Jack looked at Ianto again, now certain the reason they were still alive was the silent man who seemed calm even as he shielded like a master.

Ianto was not just shielding himself, he was shielding them all.

They walked the remaining mile to the site of the old vet's house in silence.

Jim hoped desperately that the house had not been obliterated like the Harts' house had, but when they reached the bare patch of land where the bungalow had sat and found that it was gone he had not been surprised. Disappointed, but not surprised.

He knew it could be very bad news for Jack; a dip in the February coldness of the Obama River had to have leached a lot of the heat from his core, but they had no other option but to push on toward an uncertain destination.

The exhausted group headed east, passing the spot where the school house had been without being surprised by its absence. Eventually they found themselves at Crystal Lake and the Old Big Bear Mine that polluted it with toxins from years of copper mining.

They men sheltered inside the entrance to the abandoned mine, breathing in the chemical atmosphere.

"This the best option we got?" Jack asked. Stephen stood at his side, hugging himself and shivering, the chattering of his teeth echoing in the confines of the narrow mine entrance.

"I know it's not great," Jim replied, "but it's out of the rain and away from the ships. Unless they land and send out a search party, I feel like this is a safe place."

"But what about the fumes in here?" Gwen asked. She knew the odor came from a reaction between the minerals and the water and air that they were exposed to, but he didn't know whether breathing them was a bad idea or a _really_ bad idea. "Is it safe for us to stay in here sucking them up?"

"I guess we ain't got much choice," Jack said. He hopped from foot to foot in an effort to warm himself. The dirty, polluted water splashed around his feet. The inside of the mine was dark, completely dark, and they walked deeper into its narrow shaft.

"Okay, let's stop here," Jim said in the darkness.

"Why here?" Ianto asked. His voice deflected back to him from the wall ten feet away.

"Well, we don't want to get in too far," Jim said, "and there's no standing water on the ground here. Hopefully we'll be okay until morning. We can figure out what to do when daylight comes."

Ianto scuffed his foot over the rough earth beneath it. There was no splash of water, only the sound of a continuous drip deeper in the shaft, an echoing _ploink_ that Ianto knew would drive him insane if he had to listen to it all night.

"What do you think, Jack?" he asked the darkness behind him.

"So long as it's dry," Jack replied. "I'm tired, man I need to sit down."

"Well, let's all sit down," Jim said. He knew from his first aid training that the state Jack was in, it would not be a good idea to let him fall asleep. He might never wake up. "Jack, you get in the middle. Me and Rhys will sit either side of you. Your clothes are still damp, but hopefully some of the heat from our bodies will warm you up."

"Hey, I'm not into any of that cuddling shit," Jack said. "I could sure do with a smoke though."

"Listen," Jim said. "We need to stay awake."

"Mm-hm," Jack grunted back in the darkness.

"Okay, well stay awake. You hear me?"

"Mm-hm."

They settled, side by side in the darkness, ready for a long night.

.

.

.

They were magnificent. Truly magnificent.

Earl remembered them from last time they were here, before the trouble. They looked the same, except they were much bigger than last time he'd seen them.

From his position, forty yards behind the kid and the others, he'd been as spellbound as they were when the green lights had hit.

Now, he was five miles away, preparing.

They told him to prepare good, because he was going on a long journey.

_Woo, baby._

He was excited. For five years he hadn't gone on no journey, nowhere. And now, he was going on a journey. With _aliens_.

He could almost poop in his pants with excitement, but he knew that was a bad idea. He had to prepare good, and pooping in Jack Harkness' stolen blue jeans would not be preparing good.

Perhaps they would land and take him in the ship and off to another world.

A bolt of white light flashed through his mind, focusing his attention. It brought with it pain that thrummed through his head.

First thing was to focus on the kid. Then see what the aliens did for him.

Yes, sir.

He found a Nike duffel bag and emptied it onto the floor next to the folded tent. The sneakers looked about the right size. They were black Adidas with a yellow and two green stripes down the side. Earl pulled them on and tied the laces, with difficulty. He hadn't tied a shoelace in five years.

Next, he grabbed a large bottle of Evian and took a long swallow.

He must keep himself hydrated. Without food he would survive, but without water he would perish. That couldn't happen. He had work to do.

The last item on his agenda was food. He might be able to survive long enough to carry out his mission without food, but there was food everywhere he looked. Feathered food.

He scrabbled around the campsite, turning over fold-up camp chairs and tearing up the neat pile of possessions to find what he needed.

_There, that's it. Perfect._

He grabbed a thin Gore-Tex bag. It was, presumably, the bag into which the tent was stowed when it had served its purpose. Earl grabbed the bag and the water, and turned to leave.

A rustling in the undergrowth caught his attention and he spun round. Now was not the time to have no weapon. He glanced around frantically, looking for something to grab to defend himself with.

The first things to come into view were the pointed ears, followed by the striped, spotted face. It was a Draxker, hunting for prey in the early darkness of the evening. Its eyes glowed in the gloom as it peered at him uncertainly, before cautiously continuing its search. Similar to a big cat, these creatures were the size if a small horse.

Earl let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. The Draxker sniffed around the edge of the campsite before disappearing through the trees. As it went it picked up a large bird, and this brought his attention back to his task.

He must be quick; they could return at any time. He couldn't let them see him, not yet. He shook out the bag and scrabbled around the edge of the site, stuffing birds of different sizes into it. They'd sure sent him a feast for his journey, and the weather was cool enough that the birds would last a few days before he had to worry about finding other food. Maybe by then he'd have made it to the boy, revaled himself, and done what needed to be done. Then his destiny would be fulfilled, and he wouldn't need to worry about food.

Then maybe they would take him with them, back to wherever it was they had come from.

A second flash of light buzzed through his skull.

In the centre of the clearing was a spot where a fire had burned. He grabbed a thick log that had, judging by the charred end, been used to poke the fire. This would serve as defence against attack and maybe, when the time came, a weapon.

The first part of his mission complete, he followed the same trail out of camp as the Draxker. He settled thirty yards from the site, cloaked in night's darkness, and awaiting instructions from the sky.


	17. sleep and regroup?

"Where are we going to go?" Rhys asked. While it was obvious to him that there was no point hanging around what had once been Torchwood Isles, he didn't understand what they could do once morning arrived.

"Well son," Jim replied, "we can't stay here, that's for sure. We're about ten miles from Redding. I say we head down there and see what the lay of the land is. Keep our heads down for tonight and hope those things, whatever they are, decide to leave us alone until we gotta walk, and we'll keep our eyes on the skies while we're walking. That sound good to you?"

Jack interrupted before Rhys could complain. "Sounds just about the only option to me. We need to find out what's going on elsewhere. I need to find somewhere safe for my boy."

Jack clutched Stephen close, and cast a look of defiance at the star-filled sky above.

.

.

The five-mile walk felt more like ten to Rhys. He trudged disconsolately behind the others, keeping his head down for the most part.

He scuffed his feet through wet leaves and fallen branches. The rain had subsided, finally, but the night air continued to caress with iced fingers. Rhys turned up the collar on his Rockport fleece jacket.

They were not far from the local camp site now, and Rhys lifted his glance from the sludgy floor in front of him and trained it on the rear of the group ahead.

They'd said on the radio that Lawton and Torchwood Isles were gone, along with all of the people in the two towns, and the black land they'd seen from atop Key Brow had shown that to be true.

Rhys suddenly had a thought. If this turned out like one of his favourite movies, with hostile aliens taking over planet earth, then maybe this would be it. Maybe their little group had slipped under the radar and would be left to fight against the invaders.

"Hey," he called out indignantly to the group who had stretched out a lead ahead of him. "You're going the wrong way. It's up here, on the left."

The group held back and waited for him to catch up. Gwen didn't seem to want to look at him for some reason. She and 'granddad' were focused on the boy.

"You all right son?" Jim asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Rhys replied.

Rhys remained silent for a moment as he walked through ground that squelched underfoot. Sure, he had an attitude, but it was the UFOs in the skies, and the water in his sneakers.

Christ on a pushbike, he couldn't stop his heart strings jangling even when she was mad at him.

 _Something's not right here_ , Ianto thought as they reached the camp. He swung the flashlight around, looking for someone, or something, that he sensed but could not see.

The camp appeared to be in disarray, like someone had been rummaging through the possessions. He felt it in him; the psychic man, setting eyes on the scene for the first time and knowing, just knowing, that this wasn't the way they'd left it.

"Shit, what the fuck happened here?" Rhys yelled out as he and Gwen caught up with the others next to the overturned cooler. Clearly the campers were gone so ... who did this?

"Son, mind your language," Jim said. It was pretty much the same as the first thought he'd had himself, but with a kid around, a person had to watch his Ps and Qs.

"Yeah, sorry," Rhys replied. This time he really _was_ sorry. The shock of seeing the camp turned over immediately unsettled him, and he walked to where the tent had originally been folded and covering possessions. Now, it was all spread out, like someone had been trying to find something inside or under it. A duffel bag had been emptied onto the ground. He rooted quickly through the possessions.

Jim swung the beam of the flashlight around to train it on the cooler that sat upturned a few feet from the remnants of a small campfire. As he did so, the beam passed across Stephen's eyes and the boy flinched, shrinking into his grandfather's protective figure. Janet sniffed at the ashes of the fire.

"What you got boy?" Jim strode toward the campfire's remnants.

"Looks like footprints," he said, "bare feet too."

"Buckley?" Jack asked.

"Not sure it could really be anyone else," Jim replied. "He must have slipped into the woods, like we did, and the UFOs missed him."

His fears more or less realized, he was no longer sure he wanted them to spend the night here. Buckley could be watching them, and as protective as the Labrador was of the boy, Jim wasn't too sure a man capable of what Buckley was wouldn't go straight through a snarling dog, or even a bullet, to get to another victim. "Only trouble is, it's not like we got the Ramada Inn just around the corner to check into for the night. We either try to get some rest here, or we keep on walking, through the night."

"You fellas ought to go in the caravan over there with the kid," Rhys said. This was his chance to regain some recognition as something other than a sorehead, and to get some time alone with Gwen. "Gwen and me can set the tent back up. At least you old-timers and Stephen will be a bit warmer in the van."

Jim raised an eyebrow at the _old-timers_ remark.

"Yeah, I'm fine with that," Gwen said. "I don't fancy walking through the night, it's too spooky. Let's find some clothes for Stephen."

She rummaged through clothes, grabbing a sweater and a pair of blue waterproof trousers. "Do these look okay? The trousers will be way too big, but you can turn them up at the bottom and tie them at the waist." She picked out a long-sleeve Nirvana tee with a big smiley face on the front and handed the three items to Jack.

"Thanks Gwen," Jack said as he took them from her without returning the smile. "Come on Stephen, let's get you changed into some clean clothes."

He steered his grandson toward the camper, directing the boy around the spent fire's sodden ashes as they went, before disappearing inside the van, followed by Janet, and leaving Gwen, Rhys and Jim together.

"What are we gonna do about the kid?"Rhys asked. He used the toe of his sneaker to draw a letter 'G' in the remains of the fire, dissecting a footprint as he did so. Gwen linked his arm and leaned into him for warmth and he smiled, feeling a whole lot happier from having her so near.

"I'm not sure what we _can_ do," Jim replied. "Judging from the blood on Stephen, he found his mother's body. Poor kid."

"How do you know that's what happened?" Gwen asked. "I mean, that she was murdered."

"Because before we ran into you guys, we went to Jack's house and I saw it with my own two eyes. She was in a pretty bad state. There was a lot of blood. We figured Stephen and Janet got away, because we saw their tracks in the blood. Found Ianto …. Ianto?"

They turned to find him standing back under the trees with his head lowered, like he was thinking. Creepy.

"But who killed her?" Rhys asked. Jim thought the boy hadn't blinked for about two minutes. His eyes were wide with a mixture of fear and intrigue.

"I'm pretty sure it was Earl Buckley," Jim said. "He escaped from the Clifton Center last night."

"What's the Clifton Center?" Gwen asked.

"It's a psychiatric establishment," Jim said. "Looks after about a dozen patients. Some mad, some bad, and some just plain suicidal. I'm wondering if the suicidal ones might just have gotten their wish tonight when those beams came down."

"Shit, Gwen, we're living right next to a damn loony farm?" Rhys shook his head. The question was a rhetorical one, and Gwen didn't answer. This time Jim didn't reprimand him for his language.

"You weren't more than a couple of miles away, son," Jim said. He noted the way the kid's eyes narrowed slightly when he called him 'son', squeezing out some of the glow of the flashlight.

"And that's who you reckon turned over the camp and stole the sneakers?"

"And the water," Gwen interjected.

"Yep, I reckon that's almost certainly the case. According to the radio, everyone in the two towns went with the beams. We were out here under the trees and it seems they didn't see us. Well, Buckley was probably under the trees too, and that probably means they didn't see him either. Looking at the state your camp is in means, in my opinion, that Buckley's probably still around. So we all need to listen out for anything peculiar besides the hum of those ships coming back during the night. Because the reason Buckley was in the Clifton Centre in the first place was on account of him killing his own two kids and one of my deputies in these woods five years ago."

"Whoa," Rhys said.

"I'm not sure I'll be able to sleep a wink tonight," Gwen said. "I'm a big city girl in a small town world, and I'm frightened. I'm not sure what scares me more; the ships, this Buckley guy, or just the dark out here. It's so _dark_." She looked from Rhys to Jim. In the dim glow of the flashlight, Jim could see a vein pulsing in the centre of her forehead.

Dark circles ringed her eyes.

The wintry night closed in around them, and they stood silently for a moment, listening to the ghostly wind whistling through the treetops above.

All looked across as the door of the van slid open. Jack came toward them. "Managed to change his tee and get the sweater on him, but he wouldn't let me change his jeans. I just had to pull the waterproof trousers right over them."

"Did he talk to you?" Gwen asked.

"Not a word," Jack said. "He just seemed panicked when I tried to change him out of those bloodied jeans. Grabbed hold of the waistline and refused to let go. I've put him on the back bench and covered him over with a blanket. He went right off to sleep. What a goddamn situation." He screwed up his features and rubbed at his eyes.

"Give it easy" Jim said softly.

"Easier said than done," Jack replied. "His mom is dead."

"It's almost midnight now, so I say we try and get some sleep. Gwen, Rhys, are you sure you don't mind sleeping in the tent?"

"Not a problem," Gwen said with a shrug of her shoulders and a smile. Rhys nodded in agreement, and they set to work erecting the tent a dozen feet from the camper.

"Okay guys," Jim said. "Try and get some rest. If we hear anything, we'll come get you."

He noted that Rhys' smile was more genuine than Gwen's forced effort, and he thought he knew why, but he suspected that none of them would be able to get much downtime with the threat from above, not to mention the threat from Buckley.

Ianto didn't comment or seek somewhere to sleep.

He wouldn't.

He had to shield.


	18. first real glances

Branches whipped against the side of the beat-up old van. It was almost like they were banging on the windows, frantically trying to convey a warning to the figures inside.

_It's not safe. You're not safe. Get away, run for your lives. They'll come back. The beams will come again. There's a killer in the trees. He's watching you._

Stephen lay on the rear seat, almost filling the space there. The old bobbled and patched orange blanket was pulled up to his chin, and Jack tucked it around the boy as tightly as he dared. The last thing he wanted was Stephen getting sick, not when he didn't even know where their next meal was going to come from.

Janet lay on the floor of the van, not two feet from where the deathly pale Stephen had drifted off to sleep.

"D'you think the dog would be better off outside, Jack?" Jim asked from the driver's seat. "He could listen out for Buckley."

Janet's right ear twitched, as though he knew the two men were talking about him.

"There's not a cat's chance in hell you could get that dog to leave Stephen's side tonight," he said.

"The boy's badly traumatized," Jim said. "Under normal circumstances, I'd be getting him to a hospital right about four hours ago. He hasn't spoken a word as far I can remember. For a ten-year-old kid, that's not good."

"Rhys said he told them Janet's name earlier, but apart from that he's been quiet as a mouse." Jack, sitting upright at Stephen's feet, lay the end of the blanket over his own legs.

"Let's hope things are better in Redding when we get there. Hell, let's hope Redding's still _there_ when we get there." He covered his mouth as a yawn stretched his jaw.

Jack watched Jim as he reached out and picked up the wind-up radio from the passenger seat of the van. "Let's see if we can get any update from this."

He wound the handle on the radio quickly. It made a whirring sound, and Jack glanced across to make sure Stephen was still sleeping. The boy didn't appear to have moved an inch. Janet lay on the floor of the van, his doleful eyes trained on Jack's. Jack switched his attention back onto Jim as he fiddled with the dial on the radio. It buzzed and hissed and hummed, before a small voice filtered through the static.

" _...the ships."_

" _What about the beams, Guy? Has there been any more beams from the UFOs?"_

" _Not since around 10 p.m., Michael. The three ships moved slowly north after sending down bright green beams that traced their way over the land around what was formerly Lawton and Torchwood Isles. They stopped above Mount Shasta. Within ten minutes there was no snow left on the mountain."_

" _Did it melt, disappear?"_

" _It melted, Michael. Thank God it didn't happen during the daytime, because there would have been hundreds of people skiing who would have been washed away. It was like a river running off the mountain."_

" _And where are you now?"_

" _We're on the edge of Weed, Michael. We can't speculate as to why Lawton and Torchwood Isles were zapped by these things, but the rest of the area seems to be okay right now. The ships continue to hover, suspended over the mountain. But you can't imagine the size of these things, Michael. They're absolutely huge. There are military personnel here watching them, and they're estimating the diameter of these things as around a half mile across. And the lights on the bottom of them? All I an say is wow! They're spectacular. Millions of them, twinkling like the biggest set of Christmas lights you ever saw. But Christmas seems a long time ago to the people around these parts right about now."_

" _You mentioned the military, Guy. Do they have fighter jets in the area? Is there any speculation as to what the government's response might be to these...invaders?"_

" _The military personnel I've seen are all on foot. We hiked across the black land – that's what they're calling the area that used to be Lawton and Torchwood Isles – with them. They say they can't send jets, they can't send armoured vehicles, they can't send anything, because when those ships arrived, things quit working. There's no life in any of the vehicles available to the military. As for the government's response, the Prime minister and President of America are rumoured to be meeting currently with high level officials. They are not expected to speak on the matter tonight. The three ships over American soil are just as worrying, more so as the firepower over there could lead to further casualties on the ground."_

The radio faded out. Jim didn't bother to wind the handle again. He set it back down on the front passenger seat. "Did you hear that? The man said there are three ships. They like threes?"

"Yeah, I heard it. I wouldn't want to get too close to them. Sounds like they're red hot. We saw the steam coming off the rain when it was spilling off the edge of those things earlier. But if they melted all the snow on Mount Shasta, they must be getting hotter."

"Yep, agreed. The Army can't send jets and they can't send tanks, and I don't suppose there's much point in throwing grenades at them."

"They probably won't want to risk antagonizing them. They don't know what's inside those ships. What's inside could be a million times worse than the beams."

"What about nuclear missiles?" Jim asked. "Do you think they might send a bomb?"

Jack considered this for a moment. If the Army did send a nuclear bomb to try and take out the ships, everything in at least a quarter-mile radius would be obliterated. If they escaped the fireball they certainly wouldn't escape the fallout. "I hope not," he said. "Seems we might have already taken a dose of radiation, from those beams passing over. And nuclear weapons?"

He let out a low whistle through his teeth, "well, I think it's too early for them yet. But look at it this way. The ships have gone north, we're planning on going south. Also, we're not the only ones to escape the beams. Looks like, for whatever reason, they settled on just zapping Lawton and Torchwood Isles. For now at least."

"Let's try and get some rest," Jim said. He removed his pistol from its holster and set it down between his feet. "In the morning, we'll head to Redding. We can figure out what to do once we hear what the Big Wigs got to say."

Behind them, Janet whined momentarily.

"Hang in there, Janet my boy," Jack Harkness whispered. "Need a pee too?"

.

.

.

Jack exited the caravan and walked to the tree line, almost peeing before he realised there was someone standing in the foliage. "Shit, you scared the piss out of me!"

"Just as well it was ready to rock and roll then" Ianto said and Jack found himself snorting with mirth at the dry humour.

"What are you doing out here?" Jack asked, glancing back at the camp.

"Looking" Ianto replied sagely, "Got the heebie-jeebies about who or what is out there. Wanted to make sure we are covered. A mad man out there as well as those things ya know."

"Covered" Jack repeated softly, then he looked at Ianto "Tell me something … are you the reason they didn't find is with all those beam sweeps?"

Ianto didn't answer.

"I can't hear you."

"because I did not answer" Ianto replied.

"No. Your thoughts. Your brain. You are the most advanced blocker I have ever met. How the hell do you shield so well?" Jack said as he finished and put his dick away, not the slightest bit embarrassed.

Ianto made a small noise like he didn't know what Jack was saying.

"Come on! You are a level 2 at least. You are projecting. They are seeking and you are throwing a shield over us, you are protecting us. Think I don't know another empath when I feel it?" Jack huffed "How do you do it?"

Ianto shifted from foot to foot "Look … I don't know what you are talking about. About three years ago something happened and I was forced to be strong. Someone tried to control me, he brainwashed me and made we weak. Stupid. Vulnerable. Easy. I learned to block. To … shut it out so I would never be vulnerable like that again. Yes, I am trying to keep those things away from us and I do try to throw over all of us. I don't know if it is working but I know so far we are still here."

"Whoever it was … they hurt you" Jack said sadly as the silhouette shifted back, about to run and Jack added "But now you are strong. You will not fail again."

"I don't know" Ianto's answer was soft as he sighed and stared to blend into the shadows "All I know is that you are almost as strong as me and the way you keep trying to invade pisses me off!"

"Sorry, I will play nice" Jack called as Ianto disappeared into the darkness and he whistled the dog then went back to his grandson with more questions than answers from the strange interaction he had just been a part of.

Three years ago?

How long has he been here and why had they never met?


	19. gotta rest then move on

There wasn't much room inside the tent. The air was subzero, and their breath issued forth in unseen clouds with each exhalation. The little flashlight had quit, and that was a shame, because it was on the cell phone, which meant they wouldn't be calling anybody anytime soon.

"What d'you think?" Rhys asked. He was wrapped tightly inside a sleeping bag, but still shivering like a sparrow in a snowstorm.

"About which one?"Gwen replied. She was shivering too. It was below freezing inside the stupid tent. She was certain she'd be an icicle by the time morning came, and she tried to picture herself in a tropical paradise where the sun was warm and the drinks were free.

"Jack."

"I don't know. I think maybe he's in shock. I mean, his daughter was murdered. I would have expected him to go to pieces."

"Yeah, what is it with that?" Rhys asked. "I mean, the cop is doing his best to put on a brave face. I can understand that, but I don't know about Jack. Every so often I see anger there, just beneath the surface. Like he could snap at any moment."

"He has Stephen to think about," Gwen said. Her voice held a note of impatience. Of course the cop was going to put a brave face on things. That's his job. He's just doing his job. And of course Jack was going to put his own brave face on for the sake of Stephen. He had to keep a lid on that anger, for Stephen. It wasn't gonna do the kid any good to see his grandfather running around screaming, or crying, or punching trees. The men were stoical in the face of the threat coming from the sky because they _had_ to be. It was the only way they could remain in control. "Perhaps it's the threat of what's on the ground that we should be worrying about right now."

Rhys could make out her silhouette against the background of the tent. "Meaning?"

"Meaning they talked about this Buckley guy. They said he was a killer, that he was the one who killed Jack's daughter. God, Rhys, don't you listen to anything?" She tried to be patient with him, but sometimes he was just so whiny and self-absorbed. He could do with a bit more life experience. Learn to think about people other than himself.

"Great. I'm sitting here freezing cold in a tent, with a killer probably stalking me. And if he doesn't get me, well that's fine, because the damn aliens will zap me to kingdom come. The sooner we get away from here the better."

"I'm scared, Rhys. Can't you just stop worrying about yourself for a minute, and think about someone else? What are we gonna do if this Buckley guy shows up in the middle of the night? I mean, we don't even have a weapon or anything."

"They should have put the dog out here with us. If this Buckley guy shows up, the dog would be more use outside than in the van. But listen, Gwen, he raided the camp and stole the water. I reckon he's halfway to New Idaho by now. Just try and get some rest. We've gotta walk all the way to Redding in the morning, unless the van decides to play ball, but that doesn't look too likely right now."

"How far is it?"

"The cop said it's about ten miles. I don't know how the kid is gonna cope with that."

"Yeah, but if we make it there we might be able to get him to a doctor."

"That's if there are any doctors left. That's if Redding is even still there when we get there. And that's if we even get there at all."

"What about this Ianto Jones bod? Where did he come from?" She hissed.

"Jones. Isn't he the one who purchased the old Dermott cabin a couple of years back now? Didn't come to town much, Henry at the store told me he seemed antisocial or something?" Rhys frowned "I don't remember him, mind … could pass him in the street and not notice him, sort of like he's ghosting through life. Get some sleep."

With that, Rhys stopped talking. He scrunched the sleeping bag around his head to try and keep his ears warm. Any thought he had of something happening between them had been usurped by the cold and the fear.

Gwen curled up into a fetal position inside her own sleeping bag. She didn't close her eyes. Inside the tent was deathly silent, and outside the tent was, thankfully, exactly the Same. She wondered if it was just the birds that had died when the ships went over, or if the radiation from the ships had killed the other animals in the woods. Janet seemed unharmed, but they had seen nothing to suggest there were still other animals alive out there. She guessed they'd probably find out come tomorrow, when daylight arrived.

But it was going to be a long night.

.

.

.

.

Gwen heard the scream. It pierced the early morning and struck terror into the fabric of her soul. She had frozen, unable to move. Rhys had looked at her with bleary eyes. He looked five years older, and the look had said _Earl Buckley_. But it hadn't just said Earl Buckley, no sir. What it had said was _there's a fucking monster in these woods, and it's coming for us through the trees_ , _and that monster is called Earl Buckley_. _And oh squiddly diddly fuck, what in the name of holy Jesus are we gonna do?_

The image inside her mind was one of a seven-foot-tall man with blood spattered across his face and dripping from his huge hands and she had suddenly known what to do. She had to tell Jim. He would protect them. He had a gun too, and right about then she'd wished she had a bazooka to blow the killer to smithereens.

She had rushed out of the tent and to the camper, to see the cop wide awake and looking uncomfortable in the front seat. What she hadn't known was that he hadn't slept at all. He was too worried about Buckley creeping up on them and butchering them as they slept the way he'd butchered Alice Carter. He had heard the scream – his window was open a crack – and was in the process of getting out of the van.

He'd raced off into the trees with his pistol drawn, and ten minutes later had come back with two men who had followed him. Jack and Ianto both seemed tight lipped as Jim who made a motion with his hand then said softly "Old Man Evans. Looks like he just … dove off the point. Can't believe it."

.

.

.

Now, they were walking along Interstate 765, on their way to Redding.

The dog walked ahead of the main group, weaving in and out of abandoned cars on the highway, keeping his nose to the ground and his ears pointed to the sky. They walked right along the delightfully named Cascade Wonderland Highway's three lanes. There was no concern about being hit by speeding vehicles, it seemed that even if the cars could drive the highway, there was no-one around to drive them. Either that, or the people had already fled south to get away from the ships.

Gwen walked in the middle of Rhys on one side, Ianto – on the other.

"Sure don't look like no wonderland to me," Rhys said, more in an effort to break the silence than to amuse anyone.

Ianto was much the same as Stephen had been since he wanderedout of the trees. Apart from the odd sniffle he had been silent through the first three miles of their walk down I-5. His answer to Rhys was not what Gwen expected.

"They're dead." He stopped walking as he said it, one foot either side of the white line that divided the lanes. Rhys carried on ten steps before stopping, in an attempt to keep up with the group in front. They were already fifty yards ahead, and he didn't want to lose sight of them around the sweeping bend in the distance.

"Who's dead, Ianto?"Gwen asked.

He made eye contact with her, and in his eyes was the same sorrow her mother had had in her eyes when she was seven and her Grandma had died. Back when she still thought of her mother as normal. Before she understood what her father was doing for a hobby – a Delaware whore – and what her mother was doing to challenge him about it – nothing. "They all died … screaming."

"Buddy, looks like a lotta people probably died yesterday when these UFOs turned up," Rhys called back down the road. He scuffed the toe of his sneaker across a cat's eye.

Gwen didn't reproach Rhys or even glance down the highway at him, because he was right; a lot of people probably _had_ died yesterday, and right now they needed to get moving if they wanted to catch up with the others.

Milky sunlight reflected off the road in front of them. Above, the sky was expansive, stretching away to the mountains that peered over the horizon. In the northbound lane, a freight truck stood, the cab door wide open as though someone had left in a hurry. On the opposite side of the highway, a board proclaimed _Next exit for_

 _FUN_ , but she was pretty sure they wouldn't be having any fun today, or possibly any other day for that matter.

Up ahead, the other group had stopped.

"Come on buddy, let's go," Rhys called, and for once his voice carried a bit of authority.

They started to walk again in order to cach up.

"What are they expecting to find in Redding anyway?" Rhys asked, and here was the damn whiny voice again. "Torchwood Isles and Lawton have _gone_ , all the people have _gone_ ; probably half of America is _gone_."

"We don't know that Rhys, and the only way we're gonna find out is by seeing for ourselves." Gwen snapped. "What, you think we should walk halfway across New Wales?"

"No, I think we should walk to Redding, and quit complaining. Look at it this way, we either walk to Redding with these guys and find out what we're dealing with when we get there, or we go it alone. I know what I'm doing, and unless you want to take the next exit for fun, straighten up your face and keep moving. We're halfway there now anyway." "What do you think, buddy?" Rhys asked Ianto.

"Huh? Oh, I dunno," Ianto replied. "I guess we gotta keep moving, like the lady said."

At this, Gwen did laugh. A great bray of laughter that the group ahead heard fifty yards away. "Call me Gwen, Ianto."

"Yeah, she ain't no lady," Rhys mocked, feigning a Texas accent, and both Rhys and Gwen grinned widely. And wouldn't she be damned if she didn't see a flicker of a smile cross Ianto's face too?

"Come on you guys," Jim shouted back down the road at them. "Get moving."

They did as he commanded; Rhys and Gwen still grinning like school kids, Ianto just getting through the day.


	20. more bloody walking

Jim thought the second half of the near ten-mile walk would kill him. Although it was a little warmer than yesterday, it certainly wasn't a hot day by any stretch, and he inwardly cursed every donut, every Twinkie and every hot dog he'd ever eaten as he felt beads of sweat roll down his flab-laden back. He could smell the sweat on himself, and that wasn't good. He was a proud man.

The road dipped ahead of them and stretched out toward the horizon, where the blue mountains looked like a blanket cast over a sleeping giant. The day was deathly silent all around them.

Ten yards ahead, Janet sniffed all around the road as he led them onward.

Jack dropped back until the rest of the group were ahead of him. Sensing Jack wanted to talk to him privately, Ianto did the same, and they allowed a gap of fifteen yards to open up between themselves and the last stragglers.

"How you holding up, Jack?" Ianto asked. His eyes held a look of empathy, a calm that said _I appreciate this is hard and I can wait for your reply._

"I'm okay, I guess," Jack replied. He was sweaty and he was too freaking hot, but the thoughts of his lost daughter were, strangely, not the primary thing on his mind.

"Listen, we need to be on our guard at all times," Ianto said. He spoke quietly and confidentially, shielding his mouth with a cupped hand to prevent the group ahead from hearing the conversation. "Those ships could be here any second, and we don't have any cover. It probably wasn't the wisest decision I ever made to walk down the middle of an open highway, but I figured we ought to get to Redding as soon as we could and get an idea if what happened to our town and Lawton is happening to other places. But besides that, we can't forget that Buckley could be out here somewhere. If we run into him, you have my permission to shoot the sonofabitch."

"You want me to shoot him?"

"Yes, I know you are armed, have a gun in your pocket. I want you to shoot him. We have enough on our plates with everything that's come down on us from the sky, and right now, even if we caught him, I don't know what we'd do with him. We got no cells to lock him up in. We don't even have a town to lock him up in. A man crazy enough to kill his own two kids and wife … then come at Alice like that who he doesn't even know deserves to die anyhow, and if he hadn't been bugshit crazy he'd have been appealing a death sentence. I mean, hopefully he's long gone, but he was in camp last night before we got there, and that was close enough then to be a threat. Kept me awake all night, worrying more about him than I did about the damn UFOs."

"He was in the camp?" Jack asked. Ianto was right, the sonofabitch did deserve to fry, or be needled, or any other way of being eradicated from the threatened spinning globe on which they held a precarious grip. Alice gone, and this chicken-shit still walking around breathing God's good air.

The kid trudged on, his grandfather's arm snaking around his shoulder, the Labrador at his heel. Ianto felt a lump rise up in his throat and swallowed it down. Now was the time to be strong. To be like the man Jaccob could not break.

"Yep, he was in the camp, so he could be watching us, following us for all I know. There's not much left where we came from to keep him up there. Even crazy people will get sick of eating rotting birds after a while. Or he might have headed off in the opposite direction and be halfway to New Oregon by now. Time will tell, but like I say, be on your guard, and don't be afraid to shoot if you see him. I'm not losing anyone else to Buckley. I'm hoping the beams fried him, but keep your eyes open." Ianto advised, then glanced at the handsome man whose profile was definitely worth looking at "As for the ships, listen out for that humming sound. When you hear that, _if_ you hear it, run faster than you should and get everyone to cover as fast as you can."

"I sure as shit hope those ships have gone back to wherever they came from," Jack said, and then pointed up ahead. "There's plenty of buildings up here. Looks like Jim was right; the ships haven't zapped Redding at least."

"Yeah," Ianto said. He pulled at the collar of his shirt. "But I don't like this. I don't like it one bit."

 _He's right_ , Jack thought. There were plenty of abandoned cars on the road still, and despite the traffic signals across the intersection up ahead changing as regularly as ever, no cars were moving. Somewhere in the distance an alarm warbled, its ululating cries echoing through the neighbourhood. There was a heavy feeling in the air, a sense of tension that hung not just over them, the kid and the dog, but over Redding itself.

"Everyone," Jim called out to the group, "hang fire for a minute."

They came to a halt.

"Okay," Jim said. "The buildings are still here, like you guessed they would be, Jack."

Jack nodded.

"Plenty of cars, but doesn't look like there's anyone around to drive 'em," Rhys said. This time Jack shook his head. Redding was still here, but it wasn't looking good.

"One good thing," Jim continued, "is that the electricity is still on. But I want everyone to stick together now. I don't have such a good feeling about Redding. Jack, keep Stephen close. Gwen, if you don't mind, you get one side of Stephen and Jack, you get the other. I will take the lead. You boys get behind Stephen and the others, and everyone keep your eyes and ears open for any signs of life. I'm sure Janet will stick close to Stephen too. Okay son?"

The last question was aimed at Stephen, but the little guy only blinked. Jim wished Alice was here to take care of Jack's grandson. He could see that the girl, Gwen, was doing her best to provide a kind of mother figure to the kid, but Stephen didn't look chilled _or_ happy, Jack seemed at a loss to do anything but stick close to his grandson, and Gwen wasn't much more than a kid herself.

The dog looked as concerned as any of them, and Jim thought that even if the dog could talk, it wouldn't have anything to say to soothe Stephen. The kid was in a bad way.

"Stay frosty. I have a bad feelig here" Ianto warned with a rare sentence for everyone who nodded.

"Right," Jim said. "Let's get moving."

They walked close together, as Jim had asked, Stephen shielded from anything that might be lurking around a corner or behind one of the abandoned cars.

 _Could be an ET round here anywhere_ , Jack thought, and shuddered. He armed sweat from his forehead as they continued toward the intersection.

In the center of the intersection, a white Ford F-150 pickup had had an argument with a huge Coca-Cola truck. The truck had won the argument, crushing the cab of the pickup. Inside the twisted remains of the cab, Peter could make out a torso. A chambray shirt covered in blood adorned the torso, and he told the group to wait while he checked it out. He came back thirty seconds later, shaking his head, and the group hurried around the wreckage as fast as they could, shielding Stephen from the grisly sight inside. The Coca-Cola truck's driver was not inside the truck, and only Rhys rubbernecked as they skirted round its rear and continued onwards.

Ahead lay a hotel on the right, carefully manicured bushes in the shape of multi-tiered cakes standing outside, but none of the group noticed them, due to the red fire hydrant that was gushing water from its side across twenty-five feet of the road on which they walked.

"Holy shit guys," Rhys said, breaking his silence for the first time in half an hour. "Looks like you were right not to have a good feeling about this, Ianto."

Jim nodded grimly and the group crossed the intersection to avoid the spraying water. Jim looked up as they stepped over the narrow grass verge that separated the lanes, and then almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of being worried about oncoming traffic. It wasn't anything on the road they needed to worry about, it was the things in the sky. The ships that had caused at least this part of Redding to be so utterly deserted.

"Keep moving," Jim called over the sound of the water's high pressure spray, and the group did just that. Looking down the road, Jack saw that the buildings gave way to trees with bare winter branches and open ground on both sides of the road, and within five minutes the group stood on a bridge that spanned the Shakespeare River, looking out at a railroad bridge that ran parallel a hundred feet in the distance.

"Can we rest for a few minutes?" Gwen asked.

Jim opened his mouth to answer in the affirmative. A ten-minute rest and a drink of water would do all of them good. As he formed the first word of his reply, he felt something brush past his head, followed almost simultaneously by what he would later think of as a whistling ping, as a bullet missed taking his life by a matter of inches.

*.

.

.

The group sprang into action immediately. Jim and Jack drew their pistols within two seconds of the first bullet hitting the streetlight. Ianto pushed Stephen to the ground and lay down next to him, covering him as best he could with his torso without crushing him. Gwen did the same, diving on top of him to form a double barrier between Stephen and the line of trajectory the first bullet had taken.

She anticipated more bullets would be coming very soon, as did Rhys, for he had gone sprinting away looking for cover. The nearest cover was a small white bus twenty yards away, and Gwen watched him run toward it, thinking that any second she would hear a crack and see him hit the deck. Her heart provided a drumbeat accompaniment as he watched him run, the bulk of Ianto and Stephen beneath her boosting her off the ground.

Janet had lain down right next to her, so close she could smell his Labrador breath, and she let out a sigh of relief that Rhys had made it to cover just as a cloud of concrete plumed up five feet away from her head and she let out a little squeal as the second bullet winged the bridge on which she lay, totally exposed to whoever this madman was.

"Down there," Jim yelled to Jack who was running toward the end of the bridge faster than Gwen would have thought an old man like him could ever run.

A figure dressed in black and wearing a hoodie crouched among the trees on the riverbank.

"Drop your weapon," Jack shouted, as a third bullet pinged over the heads of the prostrate Gwen, Ianto, Stephen, and Janet.

Jack reached the end of the bridge and dropped to one knee, aiming his pistol over the guardrail at the dark figure below. In a deep, booming voice, he called out, "Drop your weapon immediately or I'll shoot."

Gwen squeezed her eyes shut momentarily and Janet whined.

It was a low, fearful whine, and Gwen reached out and put an arm on the dog. Janet turned his head, looked into her eyes, apparently read the fear in them, and licked her cheek.

"Not now, boy," she whispered. The gunfire had ceased.

"Yo, dudes," she heard a voice call out from below the bridge. "You human?"

It was their would-be murderer, surrendering to the cops, and he sounded young, too young to be firing guns.


	21. Eugene

_It's a goddam stupid kid_ , Jim thought as the figure below threw down his weapon and shouted up to them. He pulled down his dark hood and began to walk up the incline with his hands in the air.

"Come slowly, and keep your hands where I can see them. Crazy fool, you could have killed somebody."

"I'm sorry," the boy said as he reached the chain link fence that separated the bridge from the incline. "I thought you was them."

Jack kept his pistol trained on the boy as he climbed the fence.

"How old are you, kid?" Jim asked as he holstered his own weapon.

"I'm fifteen. I'm sorry, I really am. I thought you was them."

Jim patted him down, found him to be now weaponless, and stepped back. _Here's a damn kid_ , _only barely old enough to shave and almost killing all of us_.

The kid was quite tall, but his face betrayed his age, and Jim noted his wispy downy moustache and acne on his cheeks. "Okay, Jack," Jim said. "You can holster your weapon."

Jack did as Jim leaned on the silver rail and stared at the cracks in the road while he waited for his overworked heart to calm down and the stars in front of his eyes to fade.

Rhys walked back to where Jack and Gwen were picking Stephen up from the ground and dusting themselves off.

Jim turned to the kid again and said, "Right, let's start from the beginning. You thought we were who?"

"I thought you was the _aliens_ , man. I couldn't tell from down there whether you was humans or them."

Jim noted the terror in the boy's eyes as he spoke about _them_.

"Where is everyone else?" Jack asked.

"Gone. They took them in the flying saucer."

"They took _everyone_?" Rhys asked from ten yards away. His eyes were as wide as the young gunman's, but with excitement, not fear. This was getting to be another crazy day in the story of planet earth 7.

"Yeah, this morning, they came. Three flying saucers, and boy were they big? I ain't ever seen anything so big in my life. It was around 7 a.m. They made this noise, sounded like when a ship blasts its horn. Best alarm clock I ever heard in my life."

Jim and Jack both nodded. Ship's horn, elephant's call; they had heard the sound the kid was talking about.

"I came out of my room to ask mom what the sound was, and they were gone. mom, dad, and Amy, my little sister. So I looked out the window, and there were hundreds, no, _thousands_ of people walking down the road toward the Sundial Bridge. I thought, shit, what's going on?"He clapped a hand to his mouth. "Sorry, I didn't mean to cuss."

"That's fine, son," Jim said. "Just keep on talking."

"Well, I came out of the house, you know, to try and find my folks, but the people, they was like zombies, just walking with their eyes fixed straight ahead. I looked up, coz I could hear this buzzing sound, and right over the bridge was three of 'em. Their shadows was covering everything. It was like they were blocking out the sunrise. And they had all these lights flashing on 'em."

The group stared at the boy as he told his story. Even Janet's eyes were trained on the young man. He waved his arms about as he talked, and Jim thought his voice was a little louder than it needed to be.

"One of them came down, just kept coming and coming, and the people just kept walking toward it, across the bridge. There were thousands, just lining up. I'd have thought they were just coming to see a UFO, you know, but they had this look in their eyes and none of 'em was talking. It was like they wasn't in touch with reality. Then I saw my folks. They were down on the riverbank, right where this thing was coming down, and trees were just like, flying out of the ground and into the river as the ship was fixing to land. I looked at my little sister, Amy, standing there looking up at this thing, and she looked so tiny, man. I wondered why my parents weren't picking her up and running from it. Why was everyone except me in a trance?

"A huge ramp opened up, flattening the trees that hadn't blown into the river, and all the lights went out. Coz it had lights all over it, flashing all the colours of the rainbow – did I say that? – and when it opened up, all the lights went out. I was standing there, at the end of the bridge, and when I turned around there were thousands more people behind me. So I jumped over the rail and dropped down under the bridge so I could get out of the way of the people. None of them were, but I was ready to run if lasers started blowing stuff up. "When it opened, it wasn't like a door just sliding open or anything like that. The whole bottom half peeled away and formed like a ramp around this thing. You gotta remember that it was huge; I couldn't see the end of it from where I was standing. The other two kept watch in the sky, just like I was doing on the ground. Then, you wouldn't believe it, but the people, they started walking in. They were walking into a UFO, a real-life UFO, with aliens inside, and they didn't look scared or anything like that, they just looked like zombies."

The boy paused in his tale. The group listening was rapt in the story. Jim noted that the boy had begun to tremble as he relayed the events of a few hours ago, and he chose his question carefully.

"So, did everyone go inside?"

"Yep, everyone," the boy answered. He shook his head as he spoke.

"Everyone in Redding walked into an alien spaceship?" Rhys asked. " _Everyone_?"

"Everyone," the boy answered forcefully. "Well, except the guy who got killed down the road." He gestured back the way they had come to where the huge Coca-Cola truck and the Ford had crashed.

"Son," Jim said. "There's something else I want to ask you."

"Yeah?"

"What's your name? Mine's Jim."He extended a hand to the person who had tried to kill him a few minutes earlier.

"I'm Eugene," the boy answered. "Eugene James." He shook hands with Jim.

"So, we're talking about a hundred thousand people – the entire population of Redding – walking into a spaceship?" Jim asked.

"Yeah, everyone."

"So why didn't you walk in with them?" Owen asked. "From what you say, people were hypnotized by this thing, but somehow you weren't?"

"I don't know, man. But I had my senses. I know why they came, and I wasn't gonna fall into the trap."

A terrified-looking Ianto had taken hold of Stephen's hand and led the boy away from the group. They stood about thirty feet away, staring out over the Shakespeare River's flowing blue water.

"You know why they came?" Jim asked.

"Yeah, the government knows, they've been communicating with them for years. Ain't you seen the chemtrails in the sky?" Rhys and Gwen shook their heads. Rhys continued to stare open-mouthed at Eugene. He had read about chemtrails and even heard about them on Alex Jones's radio show. He thought they were biological agents meant to control people. "I've seen them," he said.

Eugene turned to Rhys. "Well, I figured it out. The government's drawing maps in the sky for the aliens to 's what part of the chemtrail is. But you never just see one of 'em. You always see lots. Some of 'em are map trails, and some of 'em are the chemicals that turned my folks, and everyone else in Redding, into zombies. But I must be immune from the chemicals, coz I ain't become a slave like the rest of 'em."

"That's an interesting theory, son," Jim said, inwardly thinking, _the boy's gone crazy with the stress_.

"It's the truth," Eugene answered, a look of steely determination replacing the fear Jim had seen earlier.

"I got no reason not to believe you, son," Jim said.

"Well, I _gotta_ be telling the truth. If I ain't, then what happened to all the people? If you walk down a mile or so you'll see where it landed – all the trees are ripped up and stuff – then you'll believe me."

"I already told you, son, I believe you. But what happened after all the people walked into the ship? Did it just take off into the sky?"

"Yeah, pretty much. The bottom of that thing just rolled back in on itself until you could never have known it had an opening there at all. Then it took off. But before that something even stranger happened."

"What?" Rhys asked. The story was killing him with intrigue, and now there was one more strange revelation waiting to be made.

"Well," Eugene said. "After all the people walked in, one of the aliens walked out and looked all around. I thought it was looking for me, so I hid behind the bridge. It stood at the edge of the ship, and just looked around. I was hiding, and waiting for something to happen, like, I don't know like what. Something bad I suppose. But it never did. It just stood there, looking around for a couple of minutes, its eyes glowing red, then turned and went back inside the ship. Then it took off. They flew north, one of them with my folks and my sister inside."

Jim pondered a moment. He slipped his right hand into his pocket, and felt the bunch of keys he probably no longer needed but would keep out of habit. Habit was a hard thing to break.

"Cochlear implants" Ianto said after a while "He has implants. Is naturally deaf. They couldn't reach him, he didn't hear the pied piper music the rest did."

"I am deaf" the boy said with surprise as Jack swung to check his ears.

Yep.

So they did work on sound?


	22. ideas and plans

The group trudged toward downtown Redding, one person more than the day passed before, and if Jack didn't have a smoke soon he thought he would go crazy. Eugene's appearance had brought his tension levels right back up to Code Red.

They were clustered close together. Jim, Jack and the newcomer, Eugene, headed up their little band. Ianto, with Stephen and Janet either side of him and Gwen close behind came next, followed lastly by Rhys.

They walked at a fair clip as they headed through the stalled traffic, and they carried onward to an undefined destination.

"The way the cars are just sitting here with their doors open creeps me out," Jim said.

"Yeah," Jack answered. "I guess the noise just hit 'em and they went right into a trance. Slammed their feet on the brakes and started walking up to the bridge."

"The one that came out, with the red eyes, what else can you say about it? Was it tall, small, gray, silver?" Rhys asked.

"It looked just like a regular person."

"Like a regular person? What, like a _human_?" Rhys asked.

Eugene turned. "Yeah man, like a human. Except it had red eyes."

"And it wore clothes?"

"The one I saw did. Like some weird kind of body suit that was skin-colored. I thought it was naked at first, but you couldn't like, see its bits and stuff. Unless it was naked, and they don't have bits."

"Man, that's crazy," Ianto said. He laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles in one quick snap.

"Ouch," Gwen said. "Please don't do that, Ianto. It hurts my soul."

She was smiling at Ianto, although Jack couldn't figure out what she had to smile about.

"Perhaps what you saw was actually a person and it was a trick of the light or going onto the ship that caused their eyes to look weird," Jim suggested.

"Boss," Eugene said, raising his eyebrows. "I _know_ it was an alien I saw. Perhaps they're shapeshifters or something."

Up ahead, near an intersection, Jack spotted a 7-Eleven. "Hallelujah," he said with a sigh of relief, and both Rhys and Jim turned to look at him inquisitively.

Jack pointed at the store. "I gotta get some smokes before I go crazy," he said. Okay, so smoking was bad for you, and okay, he had his grandson standing right in front of him, and wasn't that just setting the shittiest example? And wasn't Stephen likely to just pick up where Jack left off when he got older and start polluting himself with those _evil_ things?

All of those considerations were just fine, but so was the one about aliens coming down from the sky, zapping towns right out of existence and kidnapping a hundred thousand people and flying them off in their spaceship.

"Man, you read my mind," Eugene said, and Jim shook his head.

"Jack, you can get as many smokes as you like, but you, son, you're not old enough to smoke and I sure don't want you dying of cancer on my conscience."

Eugene sulked, his bottom lip poking out, and jammed his hands into the pockets of his black jogging pants.

"Let's get what we need from the 7-Eleven," Rhys said. "I'm starved." His stomach was yelling Twinkie at him, and just at that moment, he felt like he could eat every Twinkie and to hell with his waistline.

The door of the store was wedged open.

To the left of the doorway was a wooden bench, the initials NB carved into it for eternity ( _unless the aliens zap it to kingdom come_ , Jack thought). Eugene sat on the bench, the morning sun washing over him. Jack motioned for Jim to enter the store first and then followed him inside, leaving Stephen outside with Ianto and the others.

The place was eerie. Apart from them, the 7-Eleven was as empty as the rest of Redding seemed to be.

"Jim," he called out to the back of the broad frame heading off down the store toward the chips and candy, "wait."

Jim stopped and turned, and Jack raised a finger, his eyes looking up but not focusing on the strip lighting inside the store. He was waiting to see if there was any update on the radio about what was going on with the ships, and he was disappointed, as the drone of Britney Spears replaced the drone of Cher. He would just have to ask Jim to check the old wind-up radio he carried with him.

He ducked behind the counter as Peter continued up the aisle.

It felt weird to be stealing from a 7-Eleven, and he supposed that was exactly he was doing. Grabbing a carton of smokes, he looked up and down the cigarette display for a lighter before grabbing a pack of matches, tearing off the top of one of the packs of cigarettes, and lighting a smoke right there in the store, leaning on the counter like he was the owner of the 7-Eleven and watching Jim stuffing Twinkies into his mouth twenty feet away.

"How are you doing, big guy?" Gwen asked Stephen. She was down on one knee, looking into the blue oceans of his eyes, and seeing no recognition. She was just about to glance away when he focused on her, and his pained expression just about broke her heart. "What, Stephen? What is it you want to say?"

But he didn't say anything. Just turned his face away again, and his crystal blue eyes faded once more.

"So," Eugene asked Rhys, "what d'you know about the New World Order?"

"I know the 2043 attack was an inside job," Rhys answered.

"Oh, please," Gwen said, shaking her head. Rhys knew no such thing. All the crazies saying missiles had hit the buildings and there were explosives inside and the hijackers were still alive were doing nothing more than disrespecting the dead. Latching on to a big bat to hit the establishment over the head with because they were young and disillusioned, and the memory of thousands of innocent people was the only thing that got tarnished. The last thing she wanted to hear was a discussion between a wacko and a wannabe wacko, and that was exactly how Rhys sounded right at that moment. Rebelling for the sake of rebelling, just like he had been for almost ten years.

Except the bullies weren't here now, not anymore, and the only person he was fooling was himself. Acting like the tough guy he hadn't been when he tripped over his shoelaces. When he landed with his head in her lap. Only Eugene looked impressed. Another kid with an axe to grind.

"Yeah man, totally," Eugene answered, nodding emphatically.

"You're right dude, but I bet you never thought the NOW was made up of aliens as well as the government, did ya?"

"No, I guess not," Rhys answered, looking thoughtfully at Eugene, who tapped his foot like he was on edge, or Red Bull, or amphetamines.

"Right, boys," Jack said. "That's enough talk about conspiracies to last me one day. Pipe down."

Gwen watched Jack with admiration. He did not sit still and rest like the others; he paced up and down, keeping watch all around them, looking and listening for signs of trouble. Like an Eveready battery, she thought. She wondered about the clunky-looking radio that he carried in his left hand, and what they would hear if they tuned it to one of the news channels. The speakers inside the store had gone from Cher to Britney Spears to Michael Bolton, but had done so with no talking in between, so Gwen was pretty sure they had a CD on repeat or something. She was certain her eardrums would explode and start leaking protest blood down her neck if she had to listen to this music for any longer than another five minutes. She hated classical music.

She looked across at Ianto. He sat on the edge of the bench, sideward to Eugene and Rhys. He looked like a tired young man; a man with a lot on his mind. She guessed he was thinking about something other than schoolboy conspiracy theories.

Actually, he was pretty cute when she really looked at him.

 _Whoa, Gwen, you got ten years on the kid_ , she thought, and suddenly felt old for the first time in her life.

But he _was_ kind of good looking. He had a soft jawline, accentuated by the stubble that had grown along it overnight, and long straight eyelashes, and...She flushed as he looked up and caught her checking him out.

She looked away quickly, only to meet the eyes of Rhys, who had been watching her watching Ianto, and wore a pained and angry expression in his eyes.

But she hadn't been checking him out, not really. This wasn't the time or the place. So, even if he was cute, it didn't mean a thing.

She fiddled with the yellow lace that extended from the hood of her sweatshirt.

Jim had crumbs around his mouth – definitely Twinkie crumbs, she thought – which he wiped at self-consciously. Rhys had stopped pacing, and stood a couple of feet from the bench. "Feel better, Jack?"

"Yeah." He looked better too after smoking two cigarettes, and hold the front page, Gwen thought, smoking is _bad_ for you.

"Wanna check out the radio and see what the news is saying about the ships?" Rhys asked.

"Sure thing," Jim said. "Just what I was gonna say myself." He wound the handle on the radio and brought it to life like an old musical box. Gwen waited with bated breath to see what surprises would spring from it.

But today there were none. The only thing the radio emitted was a buzzing hiss, and no matter how much Jim's big chunky fingers fiddled with the small plastic dial, they heard no music, no voices, no news – no nothing.

"Government's shut down the radio stations," Eugene said. Gwen wanted to slap him, hard. There was no such thing as the new World Order, and the government was _not_ in collaboration with aliens.

Even less likely was the government not allowing news to be spread to the people when something as damn frightening as this was going on right in their own back yards. The dumbasses were more likely to be priming every nuke in America to fire at the ships, and all of a sudden she felt very frightened.

Jim clicked off the radio and stood it down next to the scraped and scuffed old bench.

"Consider this," she said. She pointed at Stephen with her eyes and said, "Sorry, Jack. What's the first thing the hovernment does when confronted with danger or a threat?"

"We blow them sonofab..." Rhys began to reply, and stopped mid-sentence when he saw the eyes of both Jim and Jack snap to him in warning.

"Don't know about 'we'," Eugene said with a grimace. "I ain't sure we got too much choice in the matter." He was oblivious to the fact that there was a ten-year-old boy sitting there who couldn't speak because he might well have watched his mother being murdered the day before. A boy who, under the dark green waterproof trousers they could see, still wore another pair that were stained with his mother's blood. A boy who had been subjected to an ordeal like that and had then had to go through the further ordeal of massive alien ships zapping his hometown right out of existence. Gwen thanked the God she didn't believe in that Jack and Jim had found them.

Maybe in time Stephen would come out of his trance, and maybe having his grandfather's familiar face around would speed up the boy's recovery.

"He's right though," she said. "But something would stop them from sending nukes at the ships."

"What would that be?" Jim asked.

"People, _us_ ,"Gwen said. "They're not going to risk an even bigger story than the aliens coming here in the first place, and that's what nuking UFOs over cities filled with people would be."

She watched the recognition dawn in Jim as he nodded. In his eyes she could see a _holy shit_ , but when she looked at the rest of the group she saw that they stared back at her blankly, waiting for her to continue.

"Torchwood Isles and Lawton are gone. They're ten miles away from Redding, and hey, guess what? Redding, to anyone looking from a distance, is looking pretty deserted right now. I don't know what the rest of planet looks like, but it seems to me like there might be just enough of a window that they might be tempted to send up a nuke and see what damage they can do to these ships, that's if they can get them to fire. They send nukes up over Redding, and we all go up with them. Sorry Jack."

"We gotta move," Ianto said. "If we don't we could end up toast."

"Burned toast," Gwen said.

He was right. Dead right. Or alive right, Gwen thought. And that was the kind of right she wanted him to stay. A cute little line appeared on his forehead when he furrowed his brow. It was a line that she thought would probably be visible permanently as he got older. That was if he _did_ get older. But he seemed to be overcoming his shyness in the face of adversity, and that was good. His survival instinct was kicking in.

She thought she might trade up.


	23. stay or go?

Earl stayed hidden in the small back office of the 7-Eleven, listening to the faint bits of conversation he could catch coming in from outside.

He'd wedged open the door of the store when he arrived, so that he would hear them coming, and then picked up his snack of choice to fill his rumbling stomach. For Jim that had been Twinkies. For Earl, it was potato chips. He'd been looking out for his old favourite, Ketchup Pringles, but he guessed they didn't do them anymore, because he couldn't find any. He _had_ found Honey Mustard flavour though, and boy oh boy, they were lip-smackingly dangerously good. He had eaten two full cans by the time he heard the group approaching the store, and squirreled himself away in the office behind the counter. This meant he had been a few feet away from Jack Harkness' orgasmic enjoyment of a cigarette, and he had been greatly amused by hearing the guy groan with delight as the first little nicotine rush he'd felt in years made his head spin a little.

When the gunman had opened fire next to the river, he'd taken his chance to get ahead of the group. Up until then, he had followed at a distance, being careful not to be seen. If he were seen, the game was over. The aliens would zap him or sure if he got busted, and that couldn't happen, not yet.

He'd know when it was time to fulfil his destiny. They'd tell him. The voice would tell him. He had run straight along the bank of the Shakespeare River when the cops had been talking to the gunman up on the bridge, and crossed the river using the old railroad bridge a hundred yards down without being seen. It was scary on the railroad bridge. It was much narrower than the road bridge, and the rails didn't offer much protection.

It was a long way down to the flowing river below, and he had crawled along it, partly so he wasn't seen from the other bridge, and partly to make sure he didn't fall into the churning waters that rushed below him.

Earl sometimes got a little dizzy when he was up high.

He'd dumped his bag with the dead birds in too, and the log he'd picked up at the campsite the previous night. He couldn't crawl along the bridge _and_ take everything with him; it would take too long and there would be more of him to get spotted, so he had dumped them and eaten a much better lunch than the dead bird he'd had for breakfast. The water he drank was better too. Not the warm stuff from the campsite, but cold stuff from one of the 7-Eleven's large refrigerators, and he was refreshed and ready to move on apart from the group.

They had told him he didn't need to stick so close now. When it was time, he would find the boy.

Or maybe the boy would find him.

"What do you mean?" Jack asked.

"I mean what I say," Eugene said. "I ain't going nowhere with you guys." His cocky and indignant tone threw just about the whole group, except for Stephen and Janet, who was busy lapping at a bowl of water provided for him by Gwen using a candy container that she had emptied out of jellybeans.

"So you want to stay here, on your own, and wait for the government to fire a nuclear bomb over your head when the ships come back?" Ianto asked in an attempt to back Jack up.

"Listen, guys. No offense to you, but I'd sooner take my chances here on my own." He scratched at the acne on his cheek as he spoke.

 _You're only gonna make that worse, kid_ , Jim thought, but what he said was, "Eugene, I don't like the thought of you here, alone in this place. It's not good for a person to spend too much time alone, especially when that person is a child, and especially when there's a threat like the one above to contend with." _But not only that_ , he thought, _there could be a threat on the ground too – Buckley_.

"I ain't a kid, and I can cope perfectly well without adults to meddle in my affairs," Eugene said. He looked proud of himself, like asserting that he was an adult made him one, simple as that, and Jack shook his head in disbelief.

"Like it or not," Jim said. "In the eyes of the law, you _are_ a kid."

He held out his hands as he spoke, gesticulating in a manner meant to placate.

"What law is that? I don't see any law around here. Can you have law without people?"

"We're the law right here and now," Jim said.

"Yeah, well you can't _make_ me go anywhere I don't want to go." And all of a sudden he was back to being a kid again. "You can arrest me. Are you going to arrest me?"

He held out his hands, crossed at the wrists.

"Come on, son, don't be silly," Jim said, turning his own hands over so they were palms down. "We don't need this. I want to get out of here today, right now in fact, and you're just complicating matters. I'm asking you one last time to come with us, and if you say no this time, then you're just gonna have to face whatever comes your way on your own."

Jim thought this tactic was reverse psychology at its finest, but the kid's response dismayed him.

"Nope, I ain't going. No way, nowhere, no how."

He ditched himself on the bench in front of the store.

Jim let out a deep sigh. Rhys looked distraught, and Jim wondered if he might decide to stay in Redding with his new buddy. He could see Gwen eyeing Rhys suspiciously, and it was pretty obvious that she was thinking exactly the same thing. His question was quickly answered.

"Eugene, man," Rhys said. "You gotta come with us. If you don't you're either gonna get nuked, or you're gonna have the Army and the government crawling all over this place. Or even worse, the ships will come back, and this time they'll find you and take you with them."

"Forget it, man. I got everything I need right here. No UFO is gonna hypnotize me. They couldn't do it before."

"No you don't, son," Jim said. "You don't have ten percent of what you need. You don't have safety, you don't have family, and you don't have community. There are no medical facilities to look after you if you get sick. Once we're gone there'll be no-one to look out for you. Sure, there's liquor and cigarettes, but you're gonna get tired of those pretty quickly, or you're gonna need medical attention from doing too much of them."

Silence fell over the group. The only noise was the sound of Eugene's fingers drumming on the bench, as they all waited for him to see sense and say _Ha, you guys, I'm shittin' you_. But what he said was, "Seriously, I'll be cool."

Ianto spoke up. "Okay, so we gotta get away from here. We gotta find less signs of people. Am I right to guess we're heading south?"

"Yes," Jim replied. "No use heading north. We know Torchwood Isles and Lawton are gone, and we know from listening to the radio that the ships were hovering over Mount Shasta last night, so we can only presume they're making their way south again, seeing as how they've been to Redding and kidnapped almost the entire population."

"Seems strange that none of us heard them this morning," Gwen said. "I sure wish we had a car we could drive."

"Well, why don't we try one?" Ianto asked. He crossed the parking lot to a Chrysler that sat abandoned, the driver's side door standing wide open and the keys dangling from the ignition. He slipped behind the wheel. Turning the key brought nothing but gurgling sounds from inside the engine.

"I got a theory," Rhys said. "I think those ships send out some kind of electromagnetic field when they go overhead, and I reckon it magnetized all the bits in the car's engines so they won't do the things they're supposed to do, because they're more or less welded together."

"Well, I guess now's not the time for us to start worrying about getting a car running," Jim said. "God gave us all two good legs and feet on which to walk. Eugene, last chance, please come with us."

"I told you, I ain't going. I'll take my chances here."

Jim and Rhys looked at one another.

"Okay," Jim said. "If you change your mind, just follow us down I-5. Where you find people is where we'll be."

They waved goodbye to Eugene at around noon. Pallid sunlight washed over the bare branches of trees and stared the small group in the face as they found Interstate 5 and walked toward Anderson. It was the next place on the map. The next turn-off off the interstate. It would take them almost six hours to walk down the highway to Anderson. Along the way they would see nothing but abandoned cars. No people, no birds; no animals at all except for Stephen's faithful companion. Just mile after mile of cracked blacktop.

Jim and Jack remained vigilant in their duty of care to their little group of exposed survivors. Peter voiced concern that walking down an open highway in a group was sure to get them spotted if one or all of the ships cruised overhead, but after some consideration they decided that, for ease of travel, that would be the way to go. If the ships came they would try and take cover in the undergrowth at the side of the highway. They might get scratched up pretty bad if they had to dive for cover, but it was infinitely easier to walk along the asphalt than to struggle through the woods that surrounded them, especially with an unresponsive child to take care of.

Jack was happy to do whatever he was told. Also glad the kid had not come, they were too large a group now. The only thing he cared about was keeping Stephen safe, and he felt like the boy was maybe just starting to show signs of coming out of the catatonic state the trauma of finding his mother's body had put him into. He'd noticed the boy making more eye contact, and it seemed he was becoming more aware of his surroundings again. He still hadn't broken the silence that had existed since he'd corrected Rhys and Gwen as to Janet's name, but that was okay, Jack could wait a little longer for that.

Ianto kept a hold of one of his hands and Jack noted that his grandson seemed to be getting strength from that as well. Good. Stick close. Jack knew their group was too large for Ianto to keep shielding like he was. Sooner or later they would run and fracture. If Stephen stuck with Ianto he knew he would be safe.


	24. Gulible?

Ianto felt pretty alone as he trudged along the blacktop. He felt edgy. Like he'd missed something, or something was going to happen soon. Rhys was behind him, and that was okay. Rhys was a bit of a geek anyhow.

Right on cue, Rhys piped up. "Hey, Ianto." He caught up with Ianto and walked beside him. Oh, and he was smiling, and his eyes looked too big, and his hair looked all greasy. Ianto wondered if he was losing it as he let Rhys fall into step.

The sun was low in the sky ahead. It glimmered off the blacktop beneath their feet without issuing forth any warmth, like it was an alien sun, brought by the ships to replace the one the people of earth were used to seeing.

 _Maybe that's it_ , Ianto thought. _Maybe their sun is dying, and they found a way to steal one of ours and replace it with theirs._

On the opposite side of the highway sat a green flatbed truck.

It was abandoned, like every other vehicle they'd seen, but the thing that caught Ianto's attention was the white flag on the driver's window.

Perhaps the driver was trying to signal that his car wasn't abandoned, and didn't that mean he ( _or she, could be a she, Ianto_ ) might be around here somewhere? None of the other vehicles dotted along the highway had any similar display; it was almost like this driver had seen the ships and tried to escape, but had left a signal to anyone who found the vehicle. Or perhaps the white flag was to signal his surrender to the ships.

_Or her surrender, Ianto. Come on now, don't be a sexist like your father and your brother. Your dead father and your dead brother._

Whatever it was, it went unnoticed by the rest of the group, as they neared the end of their exhausting twelve-mile walk along I-5 and arrived at Anderson.

Behind them, in the distance, the mountains peered over the horizon, watching them intently. The mountains watched, and the mountains never blinked. Power lines ran parallel to the road, grinning overhead, attached to structures that looked like giant robots.

And here, at the side of the highway, was the flag, hanging limply from a flagpole, looking beaten and withered in the fading light of the February afternoon. Trees lined the road, their bare branches raised to the sky, pleading for warmth and mercy from the winter. They looked like emaciated soldiers, cold and shivering at the side of the scarred blacktop, beseeching the alien visitors to spare them from their deadly beams; trying and failing to protect them, surrendering to the will of the things on the giant UFOs, before those creatures decided to send down those red beams to eradicate them completely.

It didn't look to any of the group like mercy had found Anderson.

It looked as deserted as Redding had been. Minus the shooter.

Ianto wondered about Eugene. What was he doing right now?

Was he even still alive?

The answer to his second question was yes. He was still alive.

He had just met Earl Buckley.

The man was old, short and fat. His face was filthy dirty and a line of dried blood caked his right cheek. He wore clothes that were obviously not his. The jeans were turned up maybe half a dozen times, and the sleeves of his sweater were comically baggy. The stranger pushed them up his stubby arms every few seconds. At first, he had startled Eugene when he'd come sloping out of the 7-Eleven. He'd crept out, like a ghost, like a man who didn't want to be seen. And if he was inside all that time, then why hadn't he shown himself to the others?

"Yo man," Eugene said. "Who the fuck are you anyway?"

"Name's Earl," the man replied, extending a dirty hand after jabbing a sleeve up past his elbow. It was already almost at his wrist again by the time his mud-caked hand reached out toward a grimacing Eugene James.

"Naw man, I think I'll pass on that. I can smell you from here, dude."

The stranger disappeared inside the 7-Eleven and came back,thirty seconds later. The stale, sour body odor was now mixed with deodorant. The effect wasn't much better. He was now also laden with bars of chocolate.

"Why didn't you come out when the others were here?"

"I listened. Heard you talkin' about the ships and the chemtrails and the New World Order, and I figured I'd sooner be on your side than theirs."

"Darn tootin'," Eugene replied with a smirk. "That's one thing you definitely got right."

He held out an open pack of cigarettes to Earl. He was starting to like this guy already. Even though he smelled bad, and was short, and fat. Not to mention bald.

"Say, where did you come from? Are you from Redding?"

They were both smoking now, clouds of blue smog floating around their heads in the stillness of the mid-afternoon.

"No, kid, I ain't from this two-bit town." Earl replied, a look of disdain crumpling his mud-streaked face. "I'm from Shakespeare. At least I was, anyhow. Been up north, where the ships first came. Ain't it the damndest thing?"

"Sure is."He took too long a drag on the cigarette and spluttered.

Shabby Earl whacked him on the back.

"Take it easy man," he said with a devilishly large grin on his face, but it was okay, because he was grinning _with_ Eugene, not at him.

There was a difference to that. Yes sir, there was. He was used to people grinning _at_ him – that's what school was all about; kids destroying other kids' self-confidence – but this guy wasn't laughing _at_ him, he was laughing _with_ him. They were on the same team. The same wavelength. In front of him he saw a guy that he thought was probably more interested in getting loaded than being the hero and saving America. Not like the cop and his followers.

He threw the half-smoked cigarette on the ground and wiped tears from the corners of his eyes.

"Where you headed?" Shabby Earl asked him.

"I ain't headed nowhere," Eugene replied. "Don't need to go nowhere. I'm the King of Redding."

Earl laughed, his double chin wobbling alarmingly as he did so.

"I'm older than you. Doesn't that make me the King of Redding?"

"Shit no. You ain't even _from_ Redding, bitch," Eugene replied But he grinned. This guy wasn't telling him he had to do this or he had to do that. Not like every other adult he knew.

"Hmm," Shabby Earl said pensively. "I guess you're right." He flicked his own cigarette into the trash can and crammed chocolate into his mouth.

 _This guy's got no shame_ , Eugene thought. _I love it_. Wisps of smoke began to drift out of the trash can. Within seconds the smoke began to thicken as paper inside caught alight, but Shabby Earl didn't seem to care.

"Want one of these?" he asked, handing over a bar of chocolate.

"Free today, gone tomorrow." The grin on his face was crooked, cocked to one side, and for a moment Eugene saw something like madness behind those eyes.

_Let's all go to the funfair. There's a madhouse in there. A crazy house. The funfair in his mind._

But that was okay too. The whole fucking world was crazy. And the whole fucking world might not be around much longer. He took the chocolate bar and unwrapped it, discarding the crumpled wrapper on the ground. A wispy breeze blew it back and forth in front of the store, threatening to whip it up into a mini tornado.

"Anyway, where are _you_ headed?" Eugene asked.

"Well, there ain't much going on around here. I figured I'd head on out to New Reno, find me a brothel with working girls inside; do me some gamblin' on the side of that. Still wanna stay in this empty, stinking city?"

Shabby Earl had a cunning look on his dirty face. But the idea of getting laid sounded good to Eugene. Jacking off in the darkness of night under the bed covers was getting old, and he was growing into a man now, so why shouldn't he pop that cherry? Prove he wasn't a kid any more.

"You really think there'll be people there? I mean, don't you think the aliens will have beaten us to it and, and wiped them out somehow?"

"Shit no, I know they ain't. I got me some insider knowledge on this." He winked and tapped his temple and his nails were so damn long.

"Do you play guitar?" Eugene asked. He was a sucker for an acoustic guitar.

"Used to play in a band down in Shakespeare," Earl replied, and Eugene believed him. He looked shabby, he smelled bad, he was small and bent and bald and old and in a strange kind of way made your blood run cold but that was okay, because he played _geetar_ , man.

"How the fuck you gonna get there? Reno is a long way away dude."

"Gonna have to find me a bike seeing as how none of these cars are startin'. Maybe I can find a car that works along the way. The aliens have me on a mission." He grinned, peeling his top lip back from his teeth. He was missing a couple and the front two were crooked. He wasn't about to win any beauty contests, but that was okay, because he played the _geetar_.

"Shit man, fuck it. I'll come with you. But you gotta make me a promise." Eugene grinned. He had already decided to ignore the madness behind the eyes. He was pretty sure the little freaky-looking dude wasn't some kind of sick pedo.

"Oh yeah?" Earl asked, his expression open and amiable.

"Yeah, for when we get to Reno."

"Shoot."

"You know how to play _Folsom Prison Blues_?"

Earl grinned. Without saying a word, he extended his dirty, now chocolate-covered hand to Eugene James.

This time, the fifteen-year-old took it.


	25. next stop?

"Well, looks like we're no better off here," Jim said.

"We're worse off" Rhys replied.

"How d'you figure that?"

Ianto pointed at the traffic signals. "No lights equals no juice. Electricity was still on in Redding, but the signals aren't running here. Add that to the fact that it's pretty obvious there's no people around, and I'm not too sure we got much reason to stay."

A low wall skirted a one-story house. Jim walked across the dusty verge and sat down on the wall. His usually pristine uniform was about as dirty as it had been when they pulled little Arnie from the Cooper well, but he was damned if he really cared. This was beyond bad. Torchwood Isles and Lawton, gone. Redding, everybody taken into one of the ships, and now Anderson was deserted, and maybe the only other people still alive were Eugene James in Redding, and Earl Buckley in God knew where. And without people, a society, to rely on, he wasn't sure Eugene would last too long out there on his own. He felt guilty for letting his would-be assassin stay in Redding alone, but what else could he do? Then there was the radio. At first they'd heard reports over the static, but that had ended too, and what did that mean? Did that mean that everyone had been zapped by the beams? And if so, why were _they_ still alive?

"You're probably right, Ianto. But where do we go from here? We haven't seen the ships today, and we can't walk forever." He sighed deeply, inwardly afraid of the answer he knew Ianto was about to give. Fine time to decide to talk. He hated being powerless and under threat. He liked to be in control of situations, whether he had a gun pointed at his head or whether a cat was stuck up a tree. True, it was usually the latter that troubled him most often in Torchwood Isles, but the worst thing about this was the unknown, and he had no idea how to even _start_ protecting the group of people (and dog) that had gone on ahead to check out a Walmart that Gwen had spotted from their vantage point on Cascade Wonderland Highway earlier.

"But they were in Redding this morning, Jim, and like you said back there, we're gonna have to keep on walking until we find people. These, _ships_ , only arrived yesterday. I find it hard to believe that we're the only people left right now. The very existence of Eugene back in Redding proved that to me. When we find people, we find society, and maybe then we can find some kind of order."

"Do you think the ships are here to stay?" It was a question he knew Ianto couldn't answer, but there was no harm in putting it out there. What if these things were here to take over earth, and what if more and more of the huge ships started to appear and send down those beams? What then? Would they be safer hiding out in the mountains that surrounded them? Would they be enslaved to this technologically advanced race? Or would they be wiped out? And if so, for what reason? Was it earth's atmosphere the ships had come to take? Or would they move their people here once they'd banished, killed or enslaved the human race?

"Who can say? Perhaps they're running experiments. One thing kinda baffles me though."

"What's that?" Jim studied his face as he spoke. He looked clammy and hot; flushed in the cheeks and perspiring from his brow.

"If they have the people, why are they still looking?" Ianto frowned "Who or what are they looking for? Can't be us, not a few bodies when they have so many."

Maybe they were better off dead.

The daylight was fading. Soon night would replace day. The sky above was pretty clear, but off in the distance, over the mountains, brooding clouds sat waiting for their chance to play a part in what Jim feared was going to be a long game of cat and mouse with these creatures from outer space.

"Yeah, but you heard what Eugene said."

Rhys' eyebrows knitted together and a bead of sweat rolled down the bridge of his nose. He wiped at it with his wrapped hand and winced. He then added to the conversation "He said that after the people walked into the ship in Redding, an alien walked out, and he said that alien looked just like us. Just like a human. If we're dealing with aliens that look like humans, or can _make_ themselves look like humans, then we _really_ gotta be on our guard, because Eugene could've been one of them, and anyone we meet in the future could be. If they're moving their people here, and they all look like us, and we walk into a town where there's twenty thousand of these things, all dressed up to look like humans, we'll be in chains or dead faster than a zipper goes south after eight beers."

Jack grinned at the analogy. He couldn't help himself. "Say Jim, I'm pretty scared, but a beer sounds good right about now."

"I hear you, buddy," Jim replied. He clapped Jack on the shoulder. It was a small gesture, but it reaffirmed their bond. Through all of this they had been hood men, trying to protect their little band of survivors from the threat above. But above it all they were family, and they were buddies.

"Let's get down there to Walmart and see if there are any others. This would be the place to hide out, right? I think we'll have to layover here tonight and figure out what we're gonna do in the morning, and I also figure we could have ourselves a couple of beers while we wait for our part of the earth to turn back to the sun."

They walked into the fading light together, heading down the grass verge at the side of the road toward a wire fence that stood about two foot high.

On the other side of that fence was their future. It didn't look like much from where they were, but it was all they had, for now. Their past stretched out behind them. I-5, or the Cascade Wonderland Highway, straight, silent and empty of moving vehicles for the first time since it was built in the 2060s.

Jack came to a stop as Jim walked slowly to the front of the building, everyone waiting for his decision on whether to go in or not. Jack found the sun warm and Ianto's hand slipped into his calming. He did not know when that had happend bt it waw welcome. He could feoget for a while, just exist. But he couldn't forget for long. Stephen sat on the grass in front of him. They were about twenty feet away from the entrance to the Walmart. Janet loped lazily to a line of shopping carts and lifted his leg to lay claim to them.

 _That oughta show those aliens_ , Jack thought soberly and without any amusement. He went to where Stephen sat, his knees drawn up to his chest. He was shivering ever so slightly in the fading light.

"Soldier, can you hear me?" he asked gently.

Stephen didn't react to Jack's voice. He was motionless, apart from the shivering that was almost gonna break Jack's heart. He went around Stephen and sat on the ground in front of him, crossing his legs and feeling his knees pop as he did so. Janet came over then, wanting his share of the attention and butting Jack's hand with his muzzle.

"Go away dog," Jack said, and Stephen turned and met his grandfather's gaze.

"No."

"Stephen?" Jack asked quickly, his voice full of anxiety. "Stephen, can you hear me? Talk to me, soldier."

Only more silence. Still, he supposed one word was better than nothing at all.

He cupped his hands under the boy's small face and looked into his eyes. This time, Stephen looked back. The vacancy was gone; there was recognition there. But there was also pain and horror in the boy's young eyes that made Jack almost want to die for seeing it.

He had not witnessed the scene where his daughter, Stephen's mother, had been murdered, but he remembered the look on Jim's face when he'd come out of the house, and if a grown man couldn't mask his horror from someone whose daughter had been killed, then it must have been a horrific scene to witness.

A pained expression adorned his small features, like he wanted to speak but couldn't find the words. Maybe it was going to take more time for him to come back to his senses. Maybe he would need to dispel the image of his mother's corpse from his mind first.

He hadn't just seen his mother's dead body – and as far as Jack knew he might well have witnessed her murder – he had seen a couple of giant UFOs too, and Jack could be patient. That wasn't a problem. He'd done it in the sticky, godforsaken desert outside of Boeshane, and he could sure as hell wait for Stephen to be ready to talk. That was just as long as their enemy gave them enough time to react when they showed up. Jack shifted his butt around until he sat next to Stephen and placed his arm around the boy's shoulder, drawing him to him in an effort to keep him warm while he pondered the situation.

Eugene James had told them about the people of Redding walking into one of those ships, and he hadn't been lying, because all the people were gone, and there was no way it could have happened other than the way Eugene said it had. Jack pictured a similar scene inside his mind as he felt wind stirring around him. If they came back and turned them all into zombies, then what? Would they just walk into one of the ships in a daze like the people of Redding had?

He hugged Stephen more tightly. Betsy was gone, Alice was gone, but he wasn't going to give up this little guy. Not without a fight. Janet, the Labrador, lay next to Jack, his tongue lolling and a great big smile across his doggy face. Up above, the moon said hello.

.

.

.

"So, how come the muzak is still playing and all the lights are on?"

The question was Ianto's, in response to Rhys' assertion that the electricity had been knocked out by the UFOs electromagnetic pulsing as they had passed overhead at some point.

"I think a genie kicked in and kept the lights on and the muzak playing," Rhys answered. He was ticked off with Ianto. Who was this guy to start questioning his intelligence? Rhys thought he ought to have a bit of respect for someone who'd been around longer than him. Bloody import, only on planet for a few years. Rhys had been here most of his bloody life!

They'd had no trouble entering the Walmart. It was open for business as usual, inter-galactic visitors or not. The only trouble was there was no-one there to take their money or tell them to have a nice day.

Rhys ate peanut butter right from the jar, using a baby feeding spoon, as they trailed through the store, looking for items that might come in useful. So far, they had grabbed three heavy-duty flashlights and the nine AA batteries required to power them, a jar of peanut butter, a baby feeding spoon, and nothing else.

Gwen walked in front of Rhys and Ianto, eyeing things up before deciding each time that they were not right for their needs.

"Let's take some of these outside and rest awhile," Rhys said.

There was a twinkle in his eye that said _joint_ , and Rhys and Gwen helped themselves to faux leather recliner chairs.

"I gotta go find a restroom," Ianto said, and headed for the back of the store.

He was seriously considering if staying in the group was a good idea.


	26. noticing the small things

"So, what do you think of Ianto?"

There was no inflection in his tone to suggest to Gwen that Rhys was angry. Nothing, even, to suggest the question was anything but innocent. But his eyes were brooding; reflecting unrest from their stormy centres, the irises swirling with a thousand storms.

"How would you like me to answer the question, Rhys?" She knew she would have to guard her emotions from him. Right about now was not the time for divisions in their little group, especially when even their future plans were uncertain, and she held her cards close to her chest. He had this way of knowing her mind, ya know?

Well, in fact, she held the flashlight close to her chest, as she sat shivering on one of the black faux leather recliners they'd dragged from the store onto the asphalt outside. She clicked it on, clicked it off, clicked it on, clicked it off, nervously anticipating Rhyss reply.

But wasn't that ridiculous? Wasn't it what her mother would call a boondoggle? A waste of time. An exercise in dicking the dog.

"I saw you looking at him outside the 7-Eleven."

"Rhys, you're a grown man."

"Yeah."

"Yeah, so act like it."

"What's that supposed to mean?" His eyes were ablaze with indignity, and Gwen looked away.

"What that's supposed to mean is this: As far as I can tell right now, we're the only people to survive these, these, aliens arriving. We've been through Torchwood Isles and we saw Lawton, and there's nothing left. We've been through Redding, and there's nobody there."

"Eugene's there," Rhys interjected.

"Okay, okay, Eugene is there," Gwen said, raising her voice ever so slightly. "But how long is he there for? Rhys, you've seen the size of those things; big enough to fit the whole of Redding – except for Eugene – inside. You've seen what those beams they send down do to whole towns, never mind individuals."

"What does that have to do with what you think of Ianto?"

"Don't be a dumbass, Rhys. You're asking me if I have the hots for Ianto, and I'm telling you that having the hots for anything except staying alive is not particularly on my agenda right now." Except, that's not strictly true now, is it Gwen? She felt colour rising in her cheeks, and she hoped Rhys would think it was caused by anger rather than embarrassment. Because what she said was right, wasn't it?

And that was why now wasn't the time to be looking at Ianto, because chances were she'd lost her whole family too. And Rhys had probably lost his, but he was too worried about what she thought of Ianto to even realize it. And why was that, actually? Why was he so bothered in the first place? Surely he didn't... No, that was too preposterous to even consider. They'd been friends, like, forever. A couple.

"Whoa, don't look at me, I got no hots for anyone here," Ianto said," Well … not for anyone here."

Ianto glanced over at Jack who was still talking to Jim to one side. Not technically over here, right?

"Get inside and find me a grill, something to fire it up with, and some meat in one of the refrigerators, if they're still running," Jim said as he walked over to them.

Gwen and Ianto jumped up out of their chairs and ran into the store. Rhys jumped over the wall and walked the other way, back in the direction of the highway, rebelling against Jim's orders and muttering under his breath as he went.

Jim decided to let him be, for now. He had missed something, clearly.

The remains of the day were quickly fading into night's starters, the glow from the light poles that towered above casting not much more than a dim glare over about a hundred cars that were left in the lot.

Ten minutes later, almost everyone felt a whole lot better. Gwen and Ianto had managed to find a grill and carried it out to the front of the store, along with a couple of bags of charcoal briquettes. Rhys had returned and had fired it up without any trouble at all. They also unloaded meat and bread, a twenty-four pack of Sprite, a twenty-four pack of Coors Light, and even a bottle of ketchup that brought an incredulous laugh of joy from Rhys as he rolled up his left sleeve to start cooking

as best he could. They had disappeared back inside the store and re-emerged with folding chairs, before disappearing a second time and hoisting a couple of huge blankets out to the lot.

They were breathing hard from the exertion by the time the smell of pork and beef cooking on the grill reached them, their breath as visible as the smoke coming from the cooking meat in the February air, but they had gotten over most of their embarrassment, and the group felt united.

"You still got that radio?" Rhys asked.

"Sure do."

"Maybe we ought to check it out. See if there's anyone talking, or if the aliens have wiped the planet clean."

"We'll do that later, son. In the meantime, let's get us something to eat and drink, recharge our batteries. What do you say?"

"Okay," Rhys said as Janet appeared just about ready to explode with anticipation as he danced from paw to paw, watching him as he slammed a pork loin steak between two pieces of bread.

Jack handed a burger to Gwen, before taking one for himself and one for Stephen and walking back to where the boy sat motionless, his small frame huddled up against the cold.

"Hey, Rhys," Ianto said. "You okay?'

"Sure," Rhys replied, but he wasn't okay. Not really.

"You want another burger?" Ianto asked. "You need to keep your strength up. None of us know what's coming next. If we have to run, you're gonna need some energy."

Rhys felt an anger washing over him, a rage as he resisted the urge to punch Ianto in the face and Ianto's head tilted like he knew it, the Ianto's hand landed on his and a softness flowed to flow.

The anger dissipated.

Ianto shielded.

Ianto grabbed a can of Sprite and walked to where Jack and Stephen sat. They were positioned a couple of feet away from one another, Stephen in front of his grandfather, both hugging their knees for warmth. While Jack gazed at his grandson, Stephen's eyes were fixed on the sky above.

"Hey," Ianto said as he briefly laid a hand on Jack's shoulder and eased himself down so that he sat next to him.

"Hey," Jack replied, not taking his eyes off his grandson.

"How's he doing?"

"Well, he ate something, so I guess that's good. And I've seen little signs that he's coming back to us; he holds eye contact longer now, and he doesn't look so dazed anymore."

"Yeah. Yeah, that _is_ good," Ianto said. "Isn't it amazing how the planet keeps right on going?"

"I guess so," Jack replied. "The trees and water and atmosphere are unchanged, while humans are in terror and turmoil."

Ianto nodded without speaking. A moment's silence passed between them, and Jack glanced across at him. "Are you OK?"

"I just want to give you a heads up, they are trying to find us. They are sending waves of anger. Rhys almost slipped out of my shielding, considered attacking me"

Jack's face paled as he glanced over at the man and Ianto said quickly "It's OK. I got him back under my wing. The problem is that others are not … if we come across others they might be hostile from the mind control being used. I can't explain it to the others without freaking them out but I know you understand me."

"I do" Jack sighed, his hand closing over Ianto's "And I am right here with you. Let me join your shields, stop fighting me. I come from a place of friendship. Let me in."

Ianto leaded back as he told Jack he would consider.

Something he never thought he would do again.


	27. lost and found

The dog padded over to Stephen. He sniffed the boy's small hand and gently licked at it once, before sitting down next to his young master and resting his jowls on the boy's knees. Jack and Ianto watched as Stephen's hand came to rest on Janet's head. His small fingers covered the dog's eyes, but Janet did not attempt to wriggle away from under the boy's hand.

"The dog doesn't mind the madness" Jack muttered.

"No, I guess not," Ianto said. "They say animals can tell when we're feeling down or upset or when we need cheering up."

Stephen was stroking Janet's head now, and Jack turned to face Ianto. He spoke in a low, almost conspiratorial voice. "You know, he brought that dog home from the woods, right before Betsy found out it was the lung cancer that she had. We never found out whose dog he was _before_ Stephen brought him home, but we never had much chance to try and figure it out, because once cancer was in our home there wasn't a lot else to think about except surviving day by day as best we could, and finding money we didn't have to pay the doctors."

It was at that moment that lightning lit up the sky.

"Whoa, where did that come from?" Rhys cried.

"That's a damn good question," Jim replied. "There isn't a cloud in the sky."

"Must be one somewhere," Jack said as he watched the boy shake. "Maybe if we count until we hear thunder we can figure out how far away the storm is."

Ianto grabbed a coke and popped the tab. "I don't think it's a storm. I got a funny feeling about this."

"You mean..." Jim started to ask, and was almost knocked off his feet as the ground beneath them began to shake.

Ianto dropped the Coke and it gurgled out onto the asphalt, forgotten within a second as he moved toward Stephen and Gwen.

Janet bolted inside the automatic doors of the store as the ground shook a second time.

"Earthquake, Jim," Rhys said in a panicked tone. "What should we do?"

"Okay," Jim shouted. "I want everybody to gather together and stay away from the front of the store. If any part of the building collapses, we need to..."

He was cut off mid-sentence, as the deep, almost mournful sound filled the sky above them. He had thought it was like a herd of elephants, but Eugene had a better description; the sound really was like a ship's horn. It boomed deeply, filling their bodies with tremors a hundred times more powerful than the ground shaking beneath their feet, and three giant UFOs blinked into view in a sky that suddenly looked cracked above them, stretching away as far as they could see, a million lights dancing on their silvery undersides.

"Oh shit," Rhys yelled. "The sky's on fire." His voice was lost in the swelling hum that echoed from the UFOs, and he too bolted inside the Walmart store.

"Jack," Jim shouted, "get inside. Gwen, grab Stephen and get in the store."

Gwen rose on legs that felt like someone else's and started toward Stephen. The boy was less than ten feet from her, but time had slowed so much that she felt like she was running through wet cement.

Stephen didn't move an inch, and that gunshot crack that meant beams were coming made her turn on her heels and run inside the store, too terrified to try and rescue the little guy, despite the shame she felt for turning turtle.

Jim forcibly pushed Jack into the store and Rhys followed them.

"My boy, my boy," Jack cried. "I gotta save my boy."

"You can't go out there," Jim shouted, and both he and Rhys held onto Jack as he tried to break free. The automatic doors slid shut on them, before sliding open again instantly as Jack tried to launch himself outside.

"No, Jack," Jim cried. "Don't do it." He planted his feet, legs apart, and pushed back against Jack's frame, his bulk stopping the taller man.

They watched as thick bright green beams came down from the ships. The beams felt across the lot like fingers, touching everything in their path and coming nearer to Stephen with every second as the group watched, terrified, from the store.

"You see that?" Gwen asked breathlessly. "The cars."

"Yeah, I see it," Rhys answered.

"You gotta let me out, Jim," Jack pleaded. "They're gonna take him."

"No, Jack," Jim said forcefully. "You're not going out there."

The terror in the eyes that looked back at Jim was almost enough to make him let go of Jack's arm and allow him to take his chances out there with the beams, but this was still his watch, Jack was still at his side, and if he had to lose people he'd sooner it was one than two.

The green beams scanned the lot, and each time they interlaced around an abandoned car, the car instantly disappeared. They didn't melt, or explode, or even fade out of existence; they were just gone, into thin air in a split second. The huge, foghorn-like cry reverberated continuously, making the sky and their surroundings ripple around them as the sound waves punched into them.

Jack continued to struggle as the beams neared Stephen, the cars disappearing one by one until there were only one or two left. Ianto stood with a hand on Stephen's shoulder, Janet the other side of the boy like sentry guards. All three silent and stock still. Statues.

When the beams found them they met and settled around them, and the group inside the entrance of the store fell still and silent, an air of terrified anticipation blanketing them. Rhys had backed away from the doors in an effort to avoid seeing what was about to become of the boy that had wandered out of the trees in front of him a million years ago. Jim had ushered Gwen to the side, and she buried her face in his shoulder, weeping with a mixture of fear, shock and guilt.

Stephen was illuminated – like a miniature Hulk – and the group watching held their collective breath, waiting for Stephen to disappear to a place none of them knew or wanted to ever go to. Ianto was ... not shining, glowing ...he and Janet seeemd to be black voids in the bright light. Still. Holding him.

Jack let out a moan as the beams split and circled the boy, spinning around him and increasing in speed, and Jim rested a hand on his shoulder. Jim could see a vein pulsing in Jack's left temple, and as the beams frittered around the motionless child outside, he wondered if Jack was about to drop dead of a massive stroke. Perhaps he _would_ lose two after all.

Stephen didn't move, despite the dust the beams kicked up enveloping him and whipping against him. He stared up and into the beams, and Jim wondered if he'd be blinded by them, or if he'd just disintegrate into thin air like the cars on the lot had. The beams spun quicker still, intensifying in brightness as they met once more before both they, and the gigantic ships above, blinked out like a switch had been flipped.

The rumbling beneath their feet ceased instantly, and the sky was still and silent again. The beams had touched Stephen, Janet and Ianto , but they had lived to tell the tale. The ships had disappeared, and Jack bolted from the store.

"Stephen, Stephen," Jack screamed as he ran across the now almost vacant lot to his grandson. He fell to his knees in front of the boy and looked him in the eyes. Stephen looked back at him, a blank expression across his small features. All around the boy, a blue haze cloaked the air. Ianto was standing behind him and Jack noted vaguely that his hands were rested on the child's shoulders. When had he got there, where was he when… Jack stared up at Ianto was he realised Ianto had shielded the boy. He had beee there the entire time putting so much energy into protecting the child that even he hadn't seen him. Gods.

Jim was next to arrive on the scene, at about the same instant a barking Labrador came to life beside his young master. Ianto blinked and looked around then stepepd away to let Jack have more space.

"Let's get him inside," Jim said, and they clumsily picked Stephen up and ran toward the Walmart.

Janet followed closely, all the time barking, seemingly sensing the gravity of the situation.

"Set him down here," Jim said, and they gently lowered Stephen to the ground.

"He's red hot," Jim said, laying a hand across Stephen's forehead.

"Stephen, can you hear me?"

Stephen looked back, his dazed eyes not reflecting the fear that shone in his grandfather's.

Jim stepped forward and laid two fingers on Stephen's neck.

"Pulse feels okay. He's hot, but he doesn't look injured. Ianto, can you grab some water?"

"Sure thing," Ianto replied, and ran through the cash registers as Gwen stepped between Jim and Jack. "Is he okay?" She shook visibly from head to toe, her hands clasped together in front of her like she was praying.

"I think so," Jim replied. "Let's just give him a little space."

"What's the haze?" Gwen noted the dim blue glow that surrounded the boy.

"I don't know," Jim said. "Just give the boy some room."

The group stood slightly away from Stephen and Jack. Rhys put his arm around Gwen's shoulder and she shrugged it away. Rhys shook his head and stepped back toward the cash registers.

Ianto returned, carrying two large bottles of water. He handed one to Jim.

"Thanks son," Jim said, twisting the cap off the bottle and crouching in front of Stephen. He cupped his left hand behind Stephen's head, tipping it forward slightly, and pressed the bottle to the boy's lips, grimacing as some trickled down the front of his sweater.

"Is he drinking it?" Peter asked.

"I think so," Jim replied. "Boy, that was a close call out there."

"Is he all right?" Jack asked frantically as tears rolled down his cheeks. "Please tell me he's all right. Stephen, talk to me. Please talk to me."

Jim handed the water to Peter and crouched in front of Stephen again, placing one knee on the thin, black carpet that covered the hard concrete floor beneath.

"Stephen," he said. "I need you to talk to me. I need to know if you're okay."

He noted that Stephen's eyes had assumed that same faraway distant stare that he'd worn pretty much ever since they had run into him with Rhys and Gwen on Woodview Road, but he didn't think the beams from the UFOs had blinded the boy.

 _Was Woodview Road really less than twenty-four hours ago?_ Jim wondered as he peered into the boy's eyes, awaiting some recognition that would tell him the child's mind hadn't been stolen by the green alien beams. He glanced up at Jack. The tortured expression on his face made him decide to try once more and he said, "Stephen, please. If you can hear me, and you're okay, just say 'yes'."

Stephen blinked once, twice, his eyes fixed on Jim's, and then he did speak. As he brought his hand slowly out of his pocket, the blue haze surrounding him evaporated and he said slowly, "The desert. We have to get out of the towns."

Jack took a reeling step away from his grandson and sat down heavily on the hard floor. An image of war and death and charred bodies and overturned vehicles flashed into his mind. _Why is he talking about the desert?_ Jack thought.

Stephen Carter looked at Ianto, and smiled.


	28. Others

"What?"

"Civilisation" Ianto nodded as he looked at Jack "We need to go to the desert …. The sand. They can't find us where they don't look. They will check towns, cities … villages. Civilisation."

"Really?"

"Think about it, we are their prey .. .they will go to where we are. We need to go where people are not. Somewhere old and abandoned, somewhere … anywhere but here!" Ianto explained patiently "They can't stay forever, they have to leave sometime. We wait it out?"

"Well we need transport," Rhys said. "What do we do?"

"Well … we are buggered with the vehicles," Gwen frowned as she looked around the group.

"There is a boat I guess" Jim said softly "We could see if one of the police water patrol boats goes and go by water but … they check the water too."

Jack felt that there was need to clarity and they didn't have time for this "Ianto? Can you shield an entire boat if we are in it?"

"What?" Jim frowned.

"Ianto is empathic with telepathic tendencies. Something I possess as well. I was picked up by the Academy at an early age as are all those who pass the testing. I am interested that Ianto dodged it but I get the feeling he dodges a lot of things." Jack replied. "51st Century humans have evolved past their expected potential. You can all learn to shield to some degree if we have the time but … Right now we need to move. I agree with my boy."

"I come from Sol 3, took a downgrade for the quiet life in the backwaters of our system" Ianto sighed "I flubbed the tests. I hid. I heard of the Agency and what it did to kids and I was damaged enough without that. If I had gone … maybe I would have excelled, been a better citizen but it didn't happen. I fell for the wrong guy and found out the hard way that psychic shielding is a real thing I should have learnt about. He almost killed me. He damaged me and the scars are everlasting. But it did teach me and I am stronger for it" Ianto shrugged and everyone gaped at the longest conversation they had ever heard from this man "I am not an alien, not a superman, just an evolved human like most of us are with the ability to hone my skills."

"Wow, you know … but a few centuries ago before we all knew about yhis it was not uncommon for those with the ability to affect the moods and events of others around them. Wars were won or lost before people realised we had evolved into these empaths" Rhys was interested now "There are levels right?"

"A boat" Jack cut into the conversation as he saw Ianto's panicked expression. "We need to check it out."

As they moved towards the small docks Jack sighed to himself "Fucking sand. Great."

"Could be worse" Ianto whispered, surprising him and he turned to him with raised eyebrows. "Could be raining."

Jack snorted and found Ianto to be right.

The forecast rain had not eventuated.

.

.

.

They got to the docks without the return of the UFOs slowing them down only to find the boats either sunk or already gone. Seems they were not the only ones who thought if this method of escape and judging from the burning ones out in the river … they were not successful.

"Great" Rhys huffed "They're toast. Now what?"

Ianto swung to stare down the river bank and Jack followed his gaze to see a small group of people coming towards them.

"OI!"

"Oh great. An 'Oi' sayer" Ianto sighed, Jack surprised to hear something akin to snobbery. Then he saw the gleam in his eyes and realised it was humour. Dry humour.

"Hi! I'm Owen. Doctor Owen Harper" Owen offered a hand "And this is my bird Toshiko."

"A pretty one too" Jack smiled as he accepted the hand and Owen frowned.

"I said she was mine."

"Wasn't talking about her" Jack countered "You ever … dabble?"

"Huh?"

Ianto started to laugh, soft and gentle but heard by Jack who grinned as he was pleased to know he had finally tickled the man.

"You had the same idea as us I guess" Gwen said as she turned to look at the boat.

"Yeah? The sewers?" Owen panted.

They all stared at him as Toshiko and the young blonde man moved around them to stand with Stephen.

"Huh?" Jack grunted.

"This planet was terra-formed, right? At first it was as inhospitable as my armpit. They had to live in the huge tunnel system they dug underground, then they could turn on the terra-forming equipment and two years later … atmo. They are still there, those tunnel systems. We can get to the entrance down by the waterfall, go deep and get out of Dodge!"

"He's right!" Ianto interjected "Underground, they can't hear us, we can't hear them. The dirt will filter them out!"

"God" Gwen wailed "Sewers?"

.

.

..so, originally I called Jim Peter. But ... Jim sounded older, more like a fat old man in a wrinkled uniform. I may have missed the name change in a chapter so you know ... it's Jim who was formerly called Peter when I began to write this. Jim just sounds older.


	29. looking?

"I thought it would smell" Gwen said after a while, the tunnels illuminated by Owen's group who were moving with purpose. Jack didn't answer her, more interested in the man who walked without a torch. Jack had only ever met one other with the mind control this one had, his tutor. The same tutor who told Jack that the level of control needed to shield another as well as yourself was dangerous. He looked back to when the ship took the body of his daughter and their house, the thing had been directly above them but spared them. Even then Ianto had instinctively protected them.

"Do you think we are deep enough to stop for a bit?" Enid asked, the one who seemed to be following the blonde man who had been introduced as Andy Davidson. She was heavily pregnant and clearly in need of a moment to pull herself together.

Andy had four others with him. Enid who was a lot younger than the name, Martha who seemed to have military training as well, Mickey who doted on her and had street smarts that reminded Jack of a little hoodlum then there was the last one. Marcus seemed more than slightly freaked out and to Jack that screamed of danger. Someone who was not in total control was someone who could get others killed as well.

Ianto stopped walking and glanced back at him, making him see that he was slowing down and he was quietly touched that Ianto was waiting for him. He moved to catch up and felt Stephen brush past him as he grabbed for Ianto's hand.

"I think there is a junction ahead, I see light" Owen called back, "we will stop there."

"Light. So they might see us?" Marcus whined.

"No, as in a solar light for maintenance work that will be fed from a station box up top" Owen said in a tone that left no mistake in his growing annoyance with this man. Andy sighed as he looked back at Jack. Yeah, they were all sick if him.

Jack considered and suddenly knew that they thought he was in charge.

"Good idea, we will take a break and some water." He called out with what he hoped was a strong voice.

Ianto stood to one side, no doubt wanting to take his time getting used to more people around him. Jack didn't know what trauma this man had suffered but could tell by his manner that someone had hurt him. Deeply. Ianto didn't like the numbers. Jack didn't either. Him, Stephen, Ianto, Gwen, Jim, Rhys, Eugene, Enid, Mickey, Martha, Andy, Owen and Toshiko. Thirteen. An unlucky number for some.

"Well there is the dog" Ianto said softly behind him, making him jump. Rare. Sneaking like that. Jack let out a nervous laugh as he turned to face the pale Welshman, that Sol3 accent unmistakeable now he had started to talk. He had come a long way … at least six months in space flight to get here. Jack didn't know him but clearly he had escaped something, or come to seek something. As Ianto turned to look at the young boy Jack knew it didn't really matter what the original plan was.

They were all in this together.

"How far along is she?" Jim asked, watching the girl rub her stomach and grimace.

"About a week or so to go I think, it the doctor got it right" Andy said as he looked over at her, then back at him "Me sister's first so … bound to go over right?"

"With his level of stress and activity?" Owen sighed "Not likely mate. At least if she goes we know the baby is not undercooked."

"But if she drops it in here …" Gwen grimaced and Ianto made a noise in the back of his throat.

Jack was immediately on alert, moving to stand near him and listen, he must be hearing something or … Jack felt it. That same pressure like a headache forming or something. Jack waved a hand in the air "Everyone hush"

They watched as Jack walked around looking up at the ceiling, Ianto moving to the wall and plastering himself against the ancient concrete like it was his best friend. Stephen hugged Janet to him as he watched the two men and tried to listen as well.

"It's … it's a siren?" Andy asked.

"No. It's … something else" Ianto replied with his head moving to one side like a spooked horse giving you the eye "Do you hear it? Calling?"

"Calling?"

"Like … a faint child's cry. Eerie. It's playing with us, trying to find us. Someone else maybe but … searching. I don't like it" Ianto shivered.

"But it can't find us" Jack assured him, suddenly seeing how vulnerable this man was as he stepped closer "It's OK. No need to hide from me."

Ianto lowered his gaze to meet Jack's and he raised an eyebrow "says the man who deliberately looks twice the age he should?"

"Touché" Jack snorted, the old man routine he put on to please his wife and daughter so comfortable he forgot it was a mere act. His not aging had alarmed them and he knew it did others as well, preferring to act older. As life wore him down it became less an act and more a sorrowful dance. After the affair come out he did question if it was his fault, acting so old while being so young … huh. Jack looked at Ianto with interest as he felt Ianto in his mind.

No firewalls.

No shields.

Somehow Ianto was already in, peeking and looking in a most polite yet insistent way.

Jack opened his mind and let him at it.

He never expected Ianto to do the same.

Not after the scars he saw in this man's psyche.

WOW.


	30. trucks full of worry

"Right. Elephant in the room" Jack said after a while. "I think I was abducted. I lost 2 hours. Anyone else?"

Silence.

Then … Andy looked around and said softly "Me, I think. I was in the shower and … then the water had run cold and I was standing dry as a duck's arse next to the stall. Like … I have no idea how long I was there."

Ianto was looking at Enid with a strange expression and Jack frowned "Ianto?"

"Enid. Sorry to ask but … you? Andy is your brother. If you were in the same house at the time … stands to reason if you never missed him or realised he was taking a two hour shower."

"Why not you then!" she shot back with genuine annoyance.

"They can't find me, they keep trying but I scatter." he said "I mean it Enid. The baby. Is it OK? I mean … how long ago did this start for you? You seem resigned to them. So calm. You felt this strange scrabbling before?"

She stared at him "No. Dreams. Just dreams."

Ianto looked at Jack and Jack wondered what Ianto had thought, then knew. God. "How long have you dreamed about them?"

She didn't answer as Andy looked at her "what dreams sis?"

"Damn" Ianto sighed, rising to walk away from them with slumped shoulders.

"Don't tell me … more than nine months?" Jack asked.

Everyone stared at him.

.

.

.

.

Enid had calmed down, no longer hysterical as Owen checked her belly and told her he was sure the baby felt normal. Of course he was blowing smoke up her arse, how could you know anything from putting hand on a bump but he was doing fine with the smile and assurances as she sat gulping some water with a pout better than a three year old.

Jack slid over to Ianto and watched those long thin fingers card though the short brown hair that looked like it needed a good wash. They all did really. Not the best place to pause for too long and Jack took a deep breath then said loudly "We need to keep moving. Get further from the town. Hopefully we can find one of the old by-ways down here where the workers used to live. If they have beds we can barricade ourselves in and get some sleep."

"I'm hungry" Gwen whined, and then grimaced at the childish sound of her own voice.

"We all are Gwen, I agree" Ianto replied softly "When we find somewhere to hole up a meal from our backpacks is a good idea. Thank you."

Jack saw that Owen was not the only one capable of blowing smoke up someone's arse as Gwen shone with delight and immediately picked up the hiking pack she had thrown down with anger. Jack saw that she needed direction "Gwen. You and Jim can take point, go ahead a little ways and see how it is. Stop at any junction or sharp turn so we all catch up, yes?"

She nodded and Jim rolled his eyes at the babysitting task as he walked a couple of steps behind her, secretly liking her as she reminded him a bit of his wife. By now he knew his wife was gone, as gone as everyone else and it felt strange to have such a hole inside him yet keep moving. Time to grieve later I guess.

Another hour and they found a worker's crash pad. A small side room with some bunk beds, table and chairs and most importantly, light. They barricaded the door shut and Gwen helped Enid to a bottom bunk where the young woman curled up with a look of misery.

"Ianto, you have to eat something too" Jack said and Ianto grunted, snatching an energy bar and chewing as he sat as far from everyone as he could, on a far corner.

Jack looked around at the forlorn bunch and sighed knowing they were far from out of Dodge yet and in need of more than just a pat on the back and a sandwich to get through the day.

"After we all finish eating maybe we should rest" Owen said as he stretched "Beds. Real beds. Might not get them again for a while and down here we are not exactly needing sunlight to walk with the solar lighting intact, right?"

"Owen's right" Jim concurred "We sleep and move on when we all feel awake again."

"So … solar lighting?" Ianto glanced up at the ceiling, "And any bathrooms?"

Jack looked at him with surprise "Yes. That door there. They all have a shower block and such so if a worker was injured or splashed with chemicals they could wash down. Shit. The water heaters might still work if the lights do."

"Same Solar grid?" Tosh was interested too, moving towards the door and Ianto warned with a small noise in his throat making her hesitate. "How do you know all this?"

"I was on a team of terra-formers back in the day. I'll check" Jack said as he slid to the door and cracked it open, peering in and smiling. "Clear."

And ya know what?

The water might have been a bit stale but it was hot.

Maybe the Gods were looking out for them after all.


	31. bigger?

Jack waited until everyone had showered and settled before going in for his own. He took the old backpack from his home with him and was infinitely relieved that the heater still worked and the water continued to be hot.

He shaved as he showered, humming softly and turning to freeze as Ianto stood under another shower next door with his back to him, with that arse as taut and rounded as Jack thought it was. Jesus Christ on a Harley … he had not looked at another man in so long … not since the binding ….Jesus.

Ianto turned and looked at him, water droplets on his eyelashes and he blinked as he heard Jack's unmistakable lust then giggled.

Giggled.

Jack grinned.

"Well now, look at you" Ianto said softly "Without the old man disguise you are quite well built yourself!"

Jack knew without looking that he was, his muscles and well defined body a turn-on to those who knew of it, his wife's betrayal all that more painful knowing that she had forgotten him somehow. With the whiskers gone and the hair slicked back Jack looked a man in his late thirties.

"I forgot" Jack admitted "I played the part of an old man so long I forgot I wasn't one. It seemed easier, ore comfortable somehow."

"You didn't like the man you were once, the man you saw in the mirror. This one was a nobody. A bit of a dick but no one of much worth. No one to be noticed or remembered" Ianto nodded "Your disguise became your new identity. You forgot it was a cover and let it immerse your life."

"Well … it's all over now" Jack sighed.

"Not for your Grandson. A soldier. You are a soldier and you are trained for this. If there is anyone here that can get us out of this shit it's you. I can't take many more bodies, I can't shield much more even with your help. If there were another maybe but …. What?"

"Another. There is one more that can shield but he is such a bastard … probably gone anyway. Gods. My old buddy, I forgot about him." Jack scrubbed his now bare face.

"We can't go back" Ianto agreed.

"No … but maybe…maybe he didn't forget his training either" Jack walked over to his stuff and pulled out a leather roll, smoothing it out to reveal that it was some sort of wrist covering with a … communicator?

Ianto settled with interest as Jack tried to bring it to life "Been so log, probably doesn't work at all. He probably pawned his years ago with… shit! John?"

"Jax?" the voice was tinny in the small speakers and Jack sighed with relief "Where the fuck are you? Have you seen this shit?"

"Johnny, where are you" Jack demanded.

"On a boat skimming the riverbank so we can tuck in each time those bastards come over" came the reply "So far so good but my shields are pretty weak. My boy is doing OK for one not trained though."

"How many of you are there?"

"Me, my boy and the girl from the post office he was banging …sorry sweetheart but that little dalliance in the woods probably saved your life ya know?"

Jack was impatient and Ianto's face told him he didn't want to hear all that either "Johnny, where are you headed?"

"About to enter Redding"

"Keep going, head for …. Ah… Charleston. We will meet you there about dusk" Jack thought hard as he checked the time and saw that they needed to think about starting to move to get there in time. "Trust no one. Everything is bat-shit crazy. I have a fellow Level 2 with me, between the three of us we can protect a small group, right? Your boy can rest and learn?"

"Jack … your family?"

"Alice is gone. Stephen is with me though" Jack was touched that he had thought of that and the anger over the car was dissipating as he really should have known John would shaft him.

"Funny, after all this time the training kicks in eh?" John's voce was soft now.

"We will meet where you dropped the gun on your foot that time" Jack said then signed off, leaning back to watch Ianto pace the small wet room.

"You are still naked you know" he pointed out and Ianto turned to face him, letting him have a lovely loooong look.

"So are you Captain"

Jack snorted and rose to get dressed, knowing Ianto was doing the same and they returned to find some asleep, some eating and Stephen sitting on the floor with the dog sharing some crisps.

"OK, we have a plan" Jack said as Ianto slid around to sit next to Stephen and steal a crisp as the child looked at him silently.

"Yeah?" Jim muttered.

"We move fast, get to Charleston where we will meet up with a friend of mine who is also ex military and trained to help protect. We keep going until we get to the countryside and we hole up." Jack said calmly as Ianto chewed and hugged the child.

"Are you insane? That's twice the distance we just walked" Gwen growled "Fuck!"

"Watch your language" Jim barked then sighed "Look. There is another way. The underground water supply running along the side of these walls. We break in and we simply float down, it all heads that way for the treatment plant right?"

"Water" Gwen said slowly "You mean sewerage."

"Well? Got a better idea missy?"

Gwen groaned as she felt her freshly washed hair.

Owen hid a grin.


	32. John is an arse in every 'Verse

So. OK. Ianto hated John Hart on sight.

He walked and talked like a rooster, leaving Owen's fluffing in the dust. He openly flirted with everyone, made sure he touched Jack almost constantly and within minutes had proven himself to be a level 3 … not a level 2 like he was saying.

"Gwen and Rhys were with Stephen" Ianto said to Jack once he had him aside "You know Stephen shields. You shield, I shield."

"And… what about Owen's group?" Jack asked. "What did you get from there?"

"Toshiko and I think … Andy? I feel another faint one. Level 4s so they had to combine to make any shield. Not like our power." Ianto sighed "John. He's a 3."

"No … a 2" Jack argued, starting to feel defensive on John's behalf.

Ianto knew it would be a fighting battle and he also knew they were limited now. With all of them together they could protect those with them. Maybe … maybe they didn't need him anymore. He considered this as he wandered a short distance away, shielding from the others as he went over options.

What was he gaining by staying? They were not protecting him, it was the other way around. A symbiotic relationship needs give and take. He had been hopeful when Jack had flirted a little and felt that age old stirring in his loins but … John was making it crystal clear that there would be a challenge and Ianto was not sure if he had the energy for that. Not when he was not looking for an attachment in the first place. The whole point of this move was to avoid harm … not invite it for fucksake.

Ianto decided to give it another day or so. Move with them from Charleston to the next township that would be a day's wander down here in the black. If in that time Jack gave him …. Something … then he would reassess but for now maybe it would be best to slip away and leave them to their quest. He was really thinking he wanted to find his own little hidey-hole somewhere and just live quietly until it's all over. One way or another.

This decided he went back.

"But why can't we just rest here for today and go after a sleep and some food!" Rhys was arguing as Gwen slumped against him with a huge pout that shows he was being her puppet.

"Because they are still searching the more condensed areas" Jack was being calm "Anywhere there might be other survivors is a hot spot for them. And for us. We can't afford more people with us, we don't want to run into others. They might not be happy to see us, might freak out like Eugene did."

"If we head for the quieter countryside spots we can go above ground again" Kim enticed and her eyes shifted to softy him as Ianto settled back to listen.

"Are you leaving us?" Stephen suddenly blurted, making everyone jump as he had not spoken since the small one syllable answers.

"I don't know" Ianto answered honestly.

"What?" Jack seemed genuinely shocked by this and Ianto blinked as he tried to understand Jack's reaction.

"I don't know" he repeated to him "We now have enough between all of us to shield without me needing to be part of the group anymore. As I have come to this planet for some isolation, I could resume that."

"Just … leave us?" Gwen looked as shocked as Jack, straightening up to stare at him "But…what if one of the others is hurt, gets lost or dies or something. The rest of us will be toast. No. No. We need you to stay!"

"No, I think I might prefer to be alone" Ianto was surprised now, feeling the anger coming off now just Gwen but the others as well. Like they…what…own him? Gonna tell him the rules? What?

"No Gwen's right. Sorry, just can't let you go" Rhys shook his head and Ianto now felt a spike of anger.

"You know, I was undecided, was still thinking about it but if you think for one goddamned minute you can keep me against my will like some bloody slave then you…"

"Hey…hey" Jack was alarmed as well, he did not like this conversation's direction "No one is keeping anyone against their will. Jesus. I think he means ... you will be on your own … not safe. We can't' let you wander out there into god knows what."

"I know exactly what he meant" Ianto said tonelessly "Do not try to handle me Captain. I am not the one with whom to fuck!

Jack lend his hands up and sighed.

Yep.

Going downhill so fast it must be Jet Rocket season.


	33. follower

Jack didn't know what to do. This was not going at all like it should, nothing was working and now the prospect of Ianto leaving the group had him feeling physically ill. He hadn't realised how much he was starting to like him until that … conversation.

Gwen was acting like it was a done deal, she and Rhys not looking at Ianto as they walked a short distance away holding hands. Jack felt annoyance in their actions, like Ianto owed them something. He was trying to see things from his point of view in the hopes of finding a way to show their need for him to stay without sounding like a bloody child.

Ianto was walking slowly, most of the group ahead of them so Jack was at the rear of the small person convoy with Ianto almost close enough to touch, then the grumpy couple ahead. He could no longer see the others, they seemed to have forgotten that sticking close together was best for shielding.

"Maybe this deep it doesn't matter" Ianto sighed, then slowed more. Jack could see why, Stephen visible ahead waiting for them with Janet. As the couple passed him he stepped back like they were contaminated. I guess they sort of were.

Ianto reached the boy and his hand touched his shoulder as Stephen fell into step his hand seeking until Ianto allowed a hold. Now like a parody of the grumpy couple ahead of them, Ianto and Stephen walked hand in hand. Janet seemed to walk with caution, looking back at Jack now and then like he was checking if he was still there. Jack canted his head at the animal who did it repeatedly.

"Not you" Ianto said after a while "The other one."

"Other one?"

"Following us."

Jack stopped walking, swinging to stare back into the darkness behind them "Who is following us. Eugene?"

"No. I think he's dead. He sort of … snapped off the grid all of a sudden. I felt a spike of fear or something then … nothing. He played with fire and was consumed" Ianto sighed. "I..I don't know."

"What do you think?"

"The one you called Buckley. He is following us, was all along. There was a gap, I had hoped he would stay with Eugene. But … then…." Ianto snapped his fingers "He disappeared from the grid. Personally I think he was bored with him, wanted to see where we were and Eugene didn't want to leave. Either leave a witness or have some fun. He likes killing."

Jack considered this, turning to stare into the dark behind them some more. "Sure?"

"Crackle and pop" Stephen said dreamily making both men jump, then look at him as he nodded slowly.

"You felt it too?" Jack asked and Stephen stared at the dog like they were not talking. He was clearly not interested in any conversations still.

"We have to tell the others." Jack said as he went to pass them but Ianto stopped him. The hand on his arm warm and gentle but the spark was there too.

"Tell them what? An insane mass murderer seems to be following us but don't panic. We will stay the course and if he catches up we will not share with him?" Ianto hissed "Do you think that will help any?"

Janet rose and shook himself, making a slow huffing noise before starting to walk after the group, Stephen staring at both men then following his dog into the darkness, the small pen light wobbling away as it seemed to shrink.

Ianto and Jack remained staring at one another, then Ianto said softly "Best catch up."

"You go, I'll just…"

"This is not the time for a confrontation. He's keeping his distance, maybe scared of the numbers. You get hurt, what will they do then? You are their leader, like … the Alpha. Maybe I should stay and confront him instead, not a great loss."

"Don't be silly, we need you" Jack spluttered.

"So there ya go" Ianto shrugged as he made his point, "We best double time it after that boy of yours."

Jack walked with Ianto "I am sorry for the reactions to your desire to leave. We are all scared."

"Me included. I don't know … I have known great fear before. It honed me even as it cleaved me" Ianto sighed "I don't know if I can do it again. Retreating and licking my wounds in the dark seems so much nicer an idea."

"Well … I wouldn't mind that either" Jack said then glanced at Ianto as the man started to snigger.

"Really? Lick me in the dark?" Ianto said making Jack trip on his own feet, then the laughter rang out as Ianto could not contain it "What am image."

"We get out of this alive … I will lick you anywhere you like" Jack promised, "Honestly, I'm lickable too."

The smile was such a transformation to that handsome face as Ianto shone.

Jack wanted the back story, wanted to know who had hurt him and more importantly .. how to convince him he would never do the same.

.

.

.

.

In the darkness Buckley moved, listening to the faint conversation. He was surprised at the insight of the man who had the sweet accent. Laughter echoing back had made him feel .. better for a moment.

Eugene had dug his heels in and learnt the hard way that he was there for a reason. He kept the store safe, kept him comfortable and when it was time to move on … he felt good under his hands.

They were good to him, giving him these little gifts.

He would not fail them.

He would listen and when the time came …

He would obey.


	34. bang boom

"Let's stop" Ianto called out as they came to a large area that must have been a vehicle bay or something. There was dim lighting and Ianto felt nothing from above, satisfied that they were indeed deep enough to not need to worry right now.

His worry was not above, but behind.

Jack felt it too, watching as the dog trotted to the entrance of the tunnel they had just exited and stare into the dark with his tail lowered between his legs. Ianto watched and then turned to Owen "Did you say you have some dynamite in that backpack if we need to blow shit up?"

Owen stared at him then said "No."

"You don't?"

"I never said it" Owen corrected, "I do have a few sticks from the construction site we wandered through how did…. WOW. You are good. That is just…freaky"

"Don't use that word!" Jack strode forward, "Give me one."

"Why?"

"They might send troops to flush out any of us left" Ianto blurted out "They would send them from the towns outwards. If there is a cave-in they would turn back, no need to push though and they would not consider anyone doing it deliberately."

"OK, that makes sense. Thought you might say to cover our tracks or some spy shit" Owen snorted.

"No…. like Ianto said. We need to cover our arses and if we do this anyone or anything that might catch our scent twill find a wall of dirt. We can sleep easier tonight knowing we have closed off a possible weak point."

"Cool" Owen handed over two sticks, Jack handing one to Ianto and headed into the black as Ianto placed the remaining one in his own pack.

"Can he see without a torch?"

"Yes. Boeshanninan, their nights as this black" Ianto replied "I studied planetary terra-forming back in uni. Never thought I would be on such a planet but … life is funny like that."

"When you were a kid…what did you want to be when you grew up?" Owen asked "I wanted to be an Olympian skateboarder. Almost made the cut too."

Ianto shrugged "A musician I guess. Loved the guitar, singing. Made a bit of money to help put me through uni with it but … I didn't like all the people, the crowds."

"Too loud?"

"You have no idea" Ianto smiled and Owen decided he liked this guy after all, he was just sort of … well. The stick up his butt seemed quite big but … maybe he had misjudged him.

Jack came padding back with the small firing button in his hand, "Come on. Let's move on. If I recall …. Finding a bay like this means more living quarters ahead."

"Actually, if we can all keep going another half hour or so… I read that they have little caddy shacks when they came up to terra-form above ground. We find the right markings on the wall next to the ladders and we will find a bunker that is just hidden under the dirt." Ianto said and everyone glanced at him.

"Ianto is right, they are sunk in for the cooler living in summer months. Christ, you think we are near one?" Jack asked.

"I think so. If we do find one, we are out in the country where they are not likely to come" Ianto nodded.

"Well, let's go. I can't wait to smell the fresh air" Gwen said and Enid followed with an eager nod of her head. John seemed to be considering and Ianto watched him as he stroked his chin, then rose to follow the women.

"He's harmless" Jack said as we watched Ianto's' eyes follow John.

"So is a cobra when asleep" Ianto snorted softy then sighed, looking back down the tunnel then at Jack who nodded.

"I planted it well, it will bring the entire thing down at the junction. " Jack whispered. Ianto nodded and they double timed it to everyone else.

When far enough Jack pressed the button and a dull thud sounded along with a puff of air that made Enid squeal then laugh nervously, Janet swinging around to stare back with surprise.

"It's OK" Ianto said as he passed the dog and touched it's head "It's done."

The dog hoped so.

.

.

.

.

.

The noise had Buckley moving faster, not sure what it was but also sure whatever it was he was not gonna be happy. He found the rock fall and stood with confusion.

This was not part of the plan.

They hadn't talked about it?

"FUCK!"

.

.

.

.

Ianto jerked, his hand tightening in Jack's and Jack hadn't even registered that they were holding hands until Ianto made a physical reaction to something that Jack barely felt.

"Him?"

"Yeah" Ianto croaked out, feeling physically ill from the anger wafting though the walls of the place "He's not happy."

"Diddums" Jack snorted.

Ianto looked back again.

He hoped like hell this would give them the gap they needed for him to lose them. For he knew full well that would not stop him, merely slow him down until he decided to walk topside to another portal.

He didn't tell Jack that though.

Let him have a victory here.

Janet lazily jogged back to his person and they walked on, Stephen's hand dropping from Ianto's' to pat his head softly.

"Good boy"

Janet grunted softly.

He was trying to be.


	35. holed up

They waited for another hour before Ianto called a halt and examined the marking with his torch light, standing so close his nose almost touched them.

"Well?" Jack was impatient and couldn't hold it anymore "Are we close?"

Ianto looked up.

Jack smiled and turned to nod to John who holstered his weapon and started to climb the ladder, reaching the top and turning the large crank handle. A whoosh of air flew down the ladder and everyone sighed with relief at the sweet smell of freedom.

Jack touched Ianto's shoulder "I will follow John to sweep the area. We are trained in this, did it for years. Anything out of the ordinary, we will see it. Stay here hidden until one of us comes back and signals, OK?"

After the two had left Owen looked at Ianto and asked "What's the signal?"

"Fucked if I know" Ianto replied grumpily, tired and fed up with being the leader all of a sudden. Owen nodded and accepted the answer as he looked up the ladder once more, the others settling against the wall to wait as Rhys stood with his gun watching both sides of the tunnel.

Ianto knew nothing was near them so let him have his macho moment, something Gwen seemed to enjoy watching and Ianto was slightly relieved to see her looking at someone other than himself. He had known full well what she had been thinking and his skin crawled, he felt cheating was one of the highest sins.

After about twenty minutes that felt like an hour Jack's head appeared and he grinned down "Clear."

"Oh. That's the fucking signal then?" Owen shouted up and then laughed as he stepped back and motioned for Tosh to climb up ahead of him.

Ianto then helped them up one by one knowing the problem was coming as Janet stood watching silently. He had been pondering and knew there was little choice as he took off his backpack and dumped the stuff on the ground then before Janet knew what he was doing he put the straps though the dog's torso and placed it back on so he was sort of plastered on his back like a big angry baby.

"I know. Undignified but there ya go" Ianto puffed as he strained to climb the ladder with the weight, getting to the top to find Jack waiting to help him hoist the dog out. Stephen was almost in tears with relief, clutching at Janet as they struggled to get him out of the backpack and then Ianto turned to go back down.

"Where are you going?" Jack asked, seizing his arm and Ianto looked at him then saw what it looked like. Did Jack think he was leaving them now?

"My stuff, I emptied the backpack and I want it back" Ianto explained and Jack nodded, releasing him to watch him disappear. Gwen rolled her eyes at the display and went to slump on a huge sofa. Enid joined her which annyoed her and Gwen rose to go back to the portal, annoyed with the display Jack was putting on of lighting him with the torch as if the black would swallow him whole or something. Talk about overkill. After a moment's consideration she pulled her own torch from her pocket and joined him with a warm smile. She bent so her cleavage was in the best position shoudl Jack need some ... comfort.

At the bottom of the ladder Ianto placed the things back in the backpack, feeling around in the shadows for things that had rolled away and as he clambered back up he felt a sharp pain, looking up as Gwen winced down at him. Jack was gaping at her with shock.

"Sorry pet, dropped my light. Did it hit you?" she asked.

Ianto knew he should go back down for it but was too angry, clambering up to sit and touch his forehead, his fingers coming away bloody.

"Shit" Owen crouched and checked him "That's gonna leave a mark."

Jack was glaring at Gwen who was simpering about her torch. He snarled "Well, you've lost it now!"

Jack went to close the lid and Ianto sighed "No. Gotta get it. It's a signal to anyone else that stops at the ladder. They might become curious and climb. No, go down with a strong light and search for anything we dropped. When you get back up we employ the locks so no one else can climb."

Jack looked at him then nodded. He was right. As Jack climbed back down Enid looked around the room with Toshiko, noting the cleanliness of the place even after all this time. Gwen was just watching Ianto with a frown. Who made him King Dick?

"Air locks" Jim explained to Enid kindly "No dust. The air is circulated from outside via venting systems so if the atmo failed those in here would be safe. Amazed it all still works. Those Terra-formers knew their stuff. A sixteen man crew worked down here at six month stretches, swapping crews with mother ships orbiting."

Stephen and Janet had retreated to a side room and found a bed. Snuggled on top with relief as they both sought some comfort and rest. Ianto rose and went after them, standing in the doorway as he looked at the bed they were on and the other large one in the room then sighing as he pulled a blanket over them both. He went to the room next door which was a large bathroom with four shower stalls. Nice. Water runs? Yes. Hot. Good. Next room was another bedroom with five single beds, another two small rooms with a double in each then another two small rooms with two single beds in each. Sixteen people, some must have been partners? Made sense, long haulers.

"OK. Stephen chose a room for him, Jack and….me I guess. Gwen and Rhys can take a double, Owen and Tosh take a double, Mickey and Martha ... you can push two singles together I guess? That leaves Jim, Enid and Andy in the five bed berth with John. John … your boy Junior and his girl Sally in the other singles? Amazing, we can all fit … a bed to spare." Ianto sighed as he thought of Eugene then looked around the room. "Everyone OK with that?"

"Maybe me and Rhys should watch over the boy in that same room" Gwen snarked "We will take that room, you and Jack take one with singles then Martha and Mickey don't have to ' _Push them together'_ after all!"

"Stephen will not agree to that. He is wanting rest, safety. His grandfather. Anyone else not happy with my decisions?" Ianto demanded angrily "Come on. Speak!"

"Actually … we will swap with Mickey and Martha" Rhys said, making Gwen swing to look at him with surprise "they can have the double. Me and Gwen don't always sleep in the same bed back home so … if I am helping with night watch I won't wake her shaking the bed to get up. She always bitches if I get up in the night for the loo."

Ianto knew there was something more to the statement and wondered if he had known about her goo-goo eyes for Ianto. Well. Good. She needed a good shock or three to wake up to the man she already has. He still hadn't noticed her move to Jack as a target.

Ianto nodded.

"Sorted then."


	36. not one of the pups

They secured everything and John looked at the outer hatch that would lead outside. He then looked at Jack who shook his head. Tomorrow. Rest first. John nodded his agreement.

Ianto helped Enid with some food, the huge oven and hot pates still in working order with the solar power intact. Soon they were all settling for their first hot meal in days, groaning as they enjoyed the sauces and such that Rhys had kept in his backpack.

Stephen was drawn out by the smell and sat to eat with them, much to Jack's delight as he made sure the boy got plenty to eat. Stephen kept looking at him and Jack was wondering why, then realised it was because he looked younger now. He had shaved off the beard and shucked old man guise, now looking himself.

"This is how I look when I feel young" Jack said softly to the boy "I age differently because of the planet I come from. Remember the photos on the walls of my parents? Boeshane."

Stephen seemed to consider then nod, looking to Ianto for something and Ianto answered as if the child had spoken out loud as he absently buttered a scone "I know. I think so too, very handsome. If he were not such a letch I might go for that."

Jack gaped as Stephen giggled and accepted the scone, Ianto looking aghast as he finally realised what he had just done. Jack's soft laughter soothed.

"You … you heard him thinking?" Owen asked with inertest.

"Sort of. I felt a question in him … like a soft touch to my arm … in a sense" Ianto frowned "I shouldn't have answered like that. Sorry. I am exhausted. A lot of shielding and I'm so on edge. I think a good night's sleep and then we can hopefully check where we are. If the markings are true, we should be in Ventura County."

"As long as it's not Trumpville. Fucking arsehole on the planet's backside" Owen huffed.

"I agree" John laughed, "He's right though. We are all on edge, tired and cranky. A sleep would help. I will take first watch."

"Wake me for the second" Jack nodded as he helped clear things away.

"I would like to help" Rhys said and Ianto shook his head.

"No Rhys, I will take the third then you can get up to do breakfast." Ianto offered "Then it's not everyone waking up at odd hours, Jack coming back to bed would wake me anyway."

Rhys nodded and Ianto watched Gwen's face shine with gratitude. _Maybe if she got some real sleep her head might come out of her arse?_ Ianto rose and went into the room that was no to be his and Jack's. He looked at the bed that was Stephen's and straightened it up, checked the large one and found a strange thrill at the thought of laying here next to that man. Even if there was no … well. Ianto didn't know if he was up for that, if he could even feel pleasure anymore.

_A dark thought._

Ianto took a deep cleansing breath to dispel it and walked back towards the door to find Janet in the doorway watching him silently. Of course. He is a dog ya know. Ianto knelt to stroke the intelligent face of the creature "Hey. You've done a stellar job so far, you are such a good boy. I wonder though … how far is this going to go? I was told by my mother once that time is like a piece of string. We cannot measure it's length only hope it doesn't have too many knots to jam us up along the way or send us in a tailspin."

Janet canted his head like he was listening.

"Buckley. He is still out there. Will continue to be as long as there is whatever it is pushing him to search for you. I know you don't fully understand me but you do know that I see you in there, right? I do not fully understand the dynamics … the … relationship but I feel the connection there and know you are not a threat. I want you to know I am not afraid of you, I acknowledge you and give you time to show yourself. However long that piece of string is. OK?"

Janet blinked slowly then gave a slow nod of his head and turned, walking back out as Jack stood outside the doorway looking down at them. Janet passed around his legs without looking up, as if nothing had just happened and Ianto looked up at Jack from where he was still crouching, then after a beat Jack offered his hand.

"How gallant of you" Ianto muttered as he accepted it, letting Jack help him rise with his tired knees complaining.

"You understand something I don't"

Ianto pulled him in and closed the door, leading him from it to the other end of the room and he hissed to him softly "The things that are here. Eugene said they looked like us. They were. What he saw were people. These things are like… riders. They ….god…infest? Is that the right word? They go into us, become us. A symbiotic relationship if friendly. If hostile they destroy the host's mind and take it over."

"Are you telling me that dog has an alien symbiote in its head?"

"I am telling you that Buckley will not stop pursing us because of the symbiotes" Ianto sighed and Jack stood for another moment or two as he stared as Ianto then his face paled.

"Stephen?"

Ianto nodded with a morose sigh.

"Yes Jack. Stephen and Janet are a pair. They move in pairs."


	37. pairs

"So … Buckley is … what. A hunter? Enforcer?"

"Look, I am not completely sure yet, it's only guessing on my part" Ianto chose to sit, his tired body aching from head to foot "All I am sure of is that the two we have here are a couple. A pair. Not like breeders or wherever, more like siblings or something. They need one another. Buckley has one too, it is … sensing? … these two and I do believe he was tasked with the job of eliminating them. I think there may be others, more out there that were like sleeper agents to help with the uprising but some didn't work out. Didn't do their job, fell in love with this place or …. I don't know. I cannot even think right. Look … Stephen is still Stephen. Whatever it is in him, it is trying to save him. Protect him just like we are. Not a threat OK?"

"What was protecting him. Shielding him" Jack got it "Why the dog keeps close to him. They are shielding us too, you did say there were several shields in the collective. You are stronger than me, I could only feel feather touches."

"There is something else" Ianto touched Jack's arm and it was electrifying, Jack suddenly unable to breathe as those stormy grey eyes latched into his "There are pairs. Twos. If one is in Buckley … where is the other one?"

Jack looked aghast.

"Buckley … we need to ask Jim what he knows about this man. When did he go mad, when did all this really start? Clearly him and his symbiote are not working as they should, something went wrong with implantation or whatever … who can say? But if we can get some timeline for when it happened to him … it may help us find the other one." Ianto surmised "It might be here."

"With us?"

"Well … how else can he track us like this? Someone or something must be communicating to let him know. He saw through our false trails, we doubled back …the others didn't notice we were doing it but … here we are. He is still there."

Jack leaned back and nodded then said softly "Lay back you are almost asleep. We are safe for now."

Ianto grunted and flopped back, Jack feeling a rush of affection as Ianto tied to toe off his boots while yawning. Jack knelt, pulling the boots off and helping Ianto onto the bed where he was soon asleep, the deep breathing soothing.

Jack sat for a while considering and then rose to leave, opening the door to find Stephen and Janet staining there staring at him with silent accusation.

"Nothing happened. We were just talking honest. He fell asleep. I was a good boy!" Jack argued then saw what was happening, sniggering as he stopped trying to explain himself and he stepped aside to let them pass, grabbing Stephen in a hug when he was close enough.

"I love you solder. I love you to the three moons and beyond, OK? That … friend you have … if it is good to you, it is good to me. OK? It's OK. I am not scared, you are not scared. We are both OK."

Thin arms snaked around him as Stephen buried his face in his chest and finally started to cry. Heaving sobs as he clung to Jack who helped him into the room and closed the door, sitting on the bed to let to poor child cry himself out. Then once he was done and Janet was asleep on the end of the bed Jack rose, kissing Stephen's forehead and he said softly "Family is family. We will all stick together. OK? We will get through this and I will not leave you."

"Grandy?"

"Yes love?"

"He's mad."

Jack stared at Stephen then asked "Buckley?"

Stephen nodded, his eyes wide "He's gonna kill us all. He wants to set fire to the world."

"Well, we will not let him. He has to get through me first and he might have something in his head telling him to move his arse but he does not have my training or strength. I killed people long before he got the idea. You saw my medals. I am trained in the art of fighting and killing. I will use everything I have to defeat him," Jack assured him.

"Good. Because he's really mad."

Jack thought he and meant mad as insane but now heard him saying mad as in enraged. "Do they know each other? Your … rider. Does he know the one in Buckley?"

Stephen didn't answer, cuddling into his dog to show he was done with this and Jack rose, standing between the beds with growing concern.

What a clusterfuck.

"Language" Ianto muttered in his sleep, rolling to his side and Jack stifled a soft snort as he looked at the handsome man who had chastised him in his sleep. For a thought.

Yeah.

Stronger than he thought.

Surely not a one?

A Prime?

Jack leaned over and kissed his forehead as well, revelling in the smell of this man and as he headed out he turned one last time to look back at them, the smile on Ianto's face reassuring.

Yeah.

They had no idea the killing machine ready to fight for these two.

Or his partner sitting calmly cleaning his weapon while on first watch.

Jack and John knew all about pairs. They were too. Only, unlike the symbiotes, these two men were brothers in arms. In blood, gore and violence. Their bond as strong as anything else out there, if not stronger as it had been honed with pain and loss.

Jack settled to make sure all the doors were closed and everyone else abed before he laid it out to John who listened, understood and sat staring into space long after Jack had gone back to lay gently next to Ianto.

After a few minutes, he began to reassemble the weapon.

His face unreadable.


	38. John starts asking

Ianto woke to the smell of food, yawning as he rose and walked out to find breakfast underway. Rhys working like he was back at the bar behind the counter. Just needed an apron. Ianto approached Jack "Hey, you were gonna wake me for the third shift."

"You needed the sleep more. I didn't. John and I had talking to do and we both enjoyed the time. Like back in basic training when we took turns snoozing as the other one kept watch. It was good to get us back into a focused mode" Jack assured him "Besides, I know the boy will eat breakfast if you do and today will want to stay close. If me and John want to peek outside then I want you here with him. Awake."

Ianto nodded as he knew the problem was the others around Stephen. Jack wanted someone close to the boy who could make sure the others didn't ask him questions. Ianto could buffer and keep Stephen from being too overwhelmed.

"How long do you think you will be?" Ianto knew he was sounding needy but needed to ask the question.

"We want to just peek out. An hour or so. Just a perimeter search then back in. We don't want to leave a trail or make it obvious that we are here until we are sure that we are alone" Jack replied.

Buckley.

He wanted to see if THAT one was nearby. Ianto nodded. Then after a moment he leaned in "Take Janet. He will sense him if he is close by and will let you know. If you say you are taking him for a pee and such, that dog is holding it all in, no one will think about it."

Jack agreed, the logic undeniable as well as the fact the dog might like a bit of space. He and John went to the door and tested the seals, nodding to one another as they slid out, Janet weaving between their legs as he whined to get out as well. No doubt busting for a pee.

"It's OK. He'll be OK" Ianto patted Stephen's shoulder "He's a good dog."

"He'll be OK too. He's a good soldier" Stephen said softly, taking Ianto's hand and squeezing before retreating to leave Ianto amused by the insight shown there.

Ianto waited.

.

.

..

.

"So … looks like we made it out of the town limits" John said as he straightened up and holstered his weapon, looking around at the dense bush they seemed to be in. "where the fuck are we?"

"I expected a plain, some sand or something. We are in a bloody copse of trees?" Jack asked with surprise. "Wait .. I see grass that way, like … it's a wood?"

"What better way to hide an entrance I guess" John shrugged "That's our training out the window. A flat terrain with defendable line-of-sight be damned. They hid the fucking thing in some bushes that have now grown into some sort of forest or something."

"Woods. They call them woods here" Jack said then frowned "Don't they?"

"fucked if I know. Hate this planet."

"I know but we take our penance." Jack sighed softly, their punishment for a botched operation the reason they were retired out to be placed here.

John considered then glanced at Jack "Is it?"

"Is it what."

"Penance?" John said softly "I mean … coincidence that we are here when this happened? How many more empaths wound up here on this planet, here in this sector? All gone? How many that fitted the bill."

Jack seemed to faiter then he frowned "Don't be silly. The Agency would never deal with…"

"I don't know. There was the deal with those kids that time we didn't agree with. Who's' to say this is not another deal. Take this lot and fuck off, leave our other rich lot alone? I mean .. a little backwater colony wouldn't be missed. Not really. All this shit going down, would we even rate back home? At least a page three event, one little column no pics. Come on Jax. Like lambs to the slaughter. Where is the galactic army? Who's come to save us? Chase them away? Well? This is Draxon Three all over again."

Jack was now staring at John who was making chilling sense.

"Jax … he's strong. So strong. So are we. Those things clearly like strong ones" John walked around looking at the grass "I thought about it all night. All night. This new guy, this Ianto. Clipped, refined. Has money. Why did he choose here? He clean?"

"Clean?"

"Yeah. You checked him for a symbiote? Buckley keeps coming, keeps following like he is driven. Or led. Does Ianto have the other one, the mate? Pairs, right?" John demanded "Is that why he seems do … calculating?"

"John …. You don't know what you are talking about!" Jack snarled "you leave him alone."

"See?" John called after him as he stomped off in search of the bloody dog "Got you all hot under the collar. Like … you! Mister love 'em and leave 'em. Looking like you are smitten. What's that crap?"

"Aye Captain Thane?"

"Aye?"


	39. pushing it

Ianto knew something had happened as Jack re-entered without John, the dog pushing past to race for Stephen who dropped to the floor for a clutch. Ianto watched Jack pace then settle on a chair at the table, his fists clenched in his lap.

"Can you see any landmarks?" Enid asked timidly "Are we far enough away to be safe?"

Jack looked over at her and nodded "Looks like we made it."

"But we can't say any more for now" John barked in the doorway, slamming the door closed as he leaned back against it "No one else outside for a few days. Not until we are sure we are alone."

Ianto canted his head as he looked at John and felt annoyance. Distrust. He let his eyes slide to Jack where he felt the same. As well as anger. A lot of anger. They'd had words out there. Someone said something the other did not like and now they were sulking? Ianto knew it was about him, didn't need to be empathic to know John did not like him and was clearly showing signs of jealousy.

"Is there at least a road nearby?" Gwen demanded "A way we can travel when we leave? We will need transport. I will not walk the entire bloody way!"

"We just got here!" Owen barked "I'm not going anywhere for a while. I want to bloody rest! Think. Jesus Christ woman, take a fucking knee!"

Jack glanced at him "Military term?"

"No, I was the sports doctor for a few local teams. That is also a term given to a player who needs a moment to clear their head and let go anger or frustration. Also, like a time out to talk about something, you say 'Take a Knee' and they'll stop what they are doing."

"In our training, it means take a moment to look and assess" John nodded, pushing off from the door to walk over and look at Ianto who was still silently watching events. He seemed to want to challenge him or something so Ianto turned and started washing the dishes like there was not someone so close he could smell him.

"John" Jack barked.

Everyone was watching now, confused as well as slightly nervous as the man stood staring at the back of Ianto's head. Then a low growl started as Janet stalked, stiff legged towards him with his lips peeled back, Stephen rising from the floor to look at him "Move away from Ianto. Now."

John looked at the child with surprise "What?"

"We like him. He's my friend. You are threatening him and we will not have it" Stephen raised his head defiantly "I know what you are thinking Johnty. He is not the one. He's a clean skin. Step away."

John stared at Stephen, then at Ianto's' head and stepped back a few paces, looking at Stephen again "clean skin. Good name for someone without a controller."

"Yes" Jack rose so everyone focused on him "I like that one too. Let's adopt that to talk about these … things. We will call us Clean Skins and those with whatever it is in their heads can be called … what … Gloves? Suits?"

"Suits" Toshiko nodded "I like that one. Like a body suit. God. We are talking so logically about something so .. .so …"

"Relevant" Jim grunted, rubbing his face "Rhys, you and I can look at that old generator later so if we have some storm roll in we can be assured of power still. These solar panels are ancient, shit in a storm."

"Yeah … a shit storm" Rhys nodded as he watched Andy move to reassure Enid, his sitter pulling her arm back with annoyance at his attention. John's boy and his girl sat huddled together in an arm chair, looking so young.

"Mickey and Martha, you two haven't said much" Jack looked over at the couple who were quietly cleaning their guns and they both shrugged to show they were not interested. He nodded. Best way to be.

"Right. So. I think an inventory of what is here might be good. A lot of long life food and such but we are still limited. Gwen is right about that, we will need to find a road, civilisation sooner or later for supplies." Jack took control, John watching people react to the ideas as Ianto continued to wash dishes.

"If this is the middle of nowhere then … Is it farmland?" Mickey asked, deciding to join the conversation after all "Maybe there is livestock? We could pinch some meat?"

"Good idea. Some recon on that is a good idea. Me and John will head out at dusk to creep about and see if there is a homestead or cattle. Sheep. Chickens. Anything we can take covertly to help but first … let's see what we have. How long it will all last before we panic."

"How long?" Gwen asked.

"How long what" Jack replied blandly.

"Do we stay here before moving on? How long will we be here!" Gwen said with annoyance.

"Why. Meeting someone?" John muttered as he turned away and Ianto glanced at him with surprise that turned to a look John did not really expect.

Anger.

John stared at Ianto as he placed the plate he was washing down and retuned his gaze then turned and left the room, closing the bedroom door behind him like John had just farted or something.

John pondered this.

Ianto leaned against the door and let his heart pound in his chest as his anger flared then died away. It was not fair to dislike the man the way he did but he did not like anyone telling him what to do or trying to invade his personal space.

Never again.

Ianto took a deep breath and reopened the door, going back to finish the dishes as John watched from the chair he was now seated in at the table. John glanced at Jack who glowered back so he looked away, rising to open a cupboard and check the contents.

Something about Ianto was just … off to him.

Nothing personal.

Maybe he was slightly miffed that he was warming Jack's bed but … no.

Nothing personal.


	40. ground rules

"Well I'm still hungry!" Gwen huffed as she watched Rhys clearing things away.

"Then you should have eaten with the rest of us instead of putting on a show" he replied calmly.

The day had seemed to lag and now everyone was doing their own thing, Ianto back in the bedroom looking through the drawers and cupboards as he wondered what was in there they might use. He felt someone behind him and knew it was not Jack, his inner voice telling him it was John and as John touched his arm he swung, catching John on the jaw and sending him flying back. Ianto took a defensive stance, his fists raised as he watched John who sat on the floor looking at him with shock.

"You … you hit me!" John spluttered with surprise.

"You were going to"

"Was not."

Ianto straightened up and looked down at him "You have waited all day to confront me while Jack is in the bathroom with Stephen and I am alone. You want to have a go at me and would love a good set to. Well? Come on. I will beat the living tar out of you."

"The living Tar … who even says that!" John laughed as he got to his hands and knees to get up then looked to the doorway that was full of angry Captain.

"What the hell is going on here?"

"John and I are acquainting ourselves with one another" Ianto said calmly "And if he touches me again I will put him down again. Every time."

"Next time you won't surprise me!"

"You will never surprise me" Ianto retorted "You smell like a wet goat that has been dead a fortnight and dragged through a cess pool before being pissed on by a Craggort!"

John blinked.

Jack started to laugh softly "He has you there. You really do reek. You need to wash and change your clothes."

"To what!" John snarked.

Ianto pointed to the drawers "Check your berth. Ours has clothing from whoever lived here, mining clothes. Sturdy and clean. Better than that, you can fill a tub and soak those, hopefully the smell will come out. You clearly are attached to them."

"You hit me" John repeated.

"You touched me" Ianto rolled his eyes "Look. I don't like being touched, challenged or even looked at. Don't you get it? I am not a happy camper. Also … I am Clean Skin. OK? I do not have one of those things inside me, only my wits and my natural abilities. Don't push me … I have done all I can to learn how to protect myself and I will never let someone hurt me again."

"So someone did" Jack saw that he was right "Someone hurt you badly."

"I almost died. He wanted to … I don't know. Own me. Control me. Eat my soul. He was insane and I was his favourite possession" Ianto shrugged "I survived. I will keep surviving. I refuse to be a victim."

"Sorry" John said with a sincere grimace "You are not what I like in a person. An enigma always rubs me wrong. I don't know what to expect."

"That is one of my defence mechanisms. You do not know me as I do not show myself … it's OK. I don't need you to like me."

A soft chuff had the men turning to find Janet in the doorway, his eyes wide and his teeth on display.

"John was bored, I was not in the mood to play" Ianto said to the creature "Go back to Stephen. He is enjoying that bath and would like you in there as well, despite your protests."

The dog grumbled low in its chest as it turned and left, John pointing "See? You speak to it."

"It's a dog. I have always had an affinity with animals" Ianto said "Why it's a shame I can't connect to you."

Ianto pushed past and John turned to Jack "did he just refer to me as an animal?"

"If the shoe fits" Jack said as he stepped closer "I told you. Leave him alone. You always did like poking your finger into power sockets."

Jack went after Ianto and John pondered the comment and went over the entire episode in his mind like slow motion, finding Jack was tight. Boredom breeds stupidity and Ianto could have had a weapon. _He does. He does have a weapon of some sort, why he used that hand, not the other. He had something hidden in the sleeve of …. Huh. Didn't notice that before. He's carrying a blade?_

John went back out and watched Ianto move around the large living area and knew he was right, a blade or something up that sleeve, strapped to his arm. _He could have used it, could have cried foul but had given a warning tap instead. Why?_

Ianto looked over at him and rolled his eyes then said loudly "Because you are a dickhead, not a threat. Stop annoying me!"

Owen looked up from where he was kneeling by Enid, taking her blood pressure and glanced over "What?"

"Nothing" Ianto muttered back "And she will be fine. Pressure perfect."

"Yeah" Owen said with surprise "she is doing great!"

Ianto hummed with what looked like annoyance as he turned away and Enid pulled her sleeve down with a matching flash of annoyance that Owen caught. He considered the fact that her readings were always perfect. How did he know that?

Gwen wailed again and Rhys gave in, making her a sandwich out of the last of their bread.

Owen kinda wished Ianto had hit her instead.


	41. anybody out there?

The sound of night had them moving stealthily through the trees. John and Jack could just make out one another's silhouettes as they moved in that familiar formation that was second nature towards the sound of running water, the river a surprise and Jack knelt to take a sample for testing as John scanned.

Clean usable water.

John glanced around and made a soft noise, pointing. Jack rose and followed his finger so see a speck of light the distance.

Civilisation?

They silently made their way towards it, the promise not to leave the Cope of trees broken as John changed his weapon for a more comfortable one and after a fifteen minute walk the light became more obvious. A camp fire.

They slowed and then Jack motioned, moving forward as John took a knee, raising his weapon to look through the sights at a suddenly clear picture ahead. There was one person, the fire roaring as they seemed to be cooking something over it on a stick.

He wondered if it was this Buckley fella then the person moved and he saw boobs. Ooo. He adjusted the scope and saw something else Jack could not from his angle. She was not alone.

Someone was crouched in the nearby bushes and John thought they might be going to the toilet before he saw their stance. They were waiting with a weapon of their own, nothing this sophisticated, no night vision clearly or he would have known Jack was coming up behind him.

John clicked his tongue softly and although the figure did not move from the click in the dark that mimicked a night cicada Jack froze, raising his own sights to double check what his naked eye was seeing and he took a few steps back, swinging to look back at John.

A hind signal to pull back and perimeter sweep the camp.

John rose, walking stealthily around and finding not only evidence of someone else, most probably down at the water but signs of rudimentary traps and warning systems he could easily disable. They were trying. They were capable.

John returned to signal Jack that there were not a threat but not in any harm either. They seemed settled and were not looking for trouble, only ready for it.

Jack considered then backed slowly away, walking with John to the river where they found not one but two more bathing with laughter and soft talking. Their clothes and weapons were discarded and Jack knew that once upon a time they would be dead already. He looked at John who shrugged.

Your call.

Jack nodded and they started to walk away, heading back to camp. Once safely out of earshot John said softly "Well."

"We can't afford more people, we don't have the room or the supplies. They are sloppy but they have brains. I think we should just let them pass by tomorrow, make sure they move on and let them go."

"Agreed" John nodded "The food thing … they had food. They are scavenging as we need to. Tomorrow we hunker down and watch for them. Then after they are gone we start looking for farmsteads and such?"

"a couple of days, in case they left a trail someone else follows" Jack replied as they walked, reaching the copse of trees and turning to make sure their own trial was not detectable. Good to know the training is still there.

"Your fella…"

"Ianto is not anyone's fella. I would like him to be more with me but he is leery. You are not bloody helping there" Jack snapped "By the Gods. I know he is rubbing you the wrong way, you don't think you are with him too? We have to learn to move in this space. Think of him as another soldier and you have to have him in the unit. Stop needling him. I have told you already, there is no symbiote. Christ!"

"I know, he just… he gives off this sort of vibe" John huffed.

"It's called annoyance" Jack countered.

"We need a scanner" John said after a while "That Toshiko. She's tech savvy. Can she get any of the old mining gear working? There has to be a rock scanner or something that she can repurpose to check up for worms."

Ianto stooped waling and looked at him "That could b dangerous! What if it caused harm? We are not exactly rock formations."

"So? We test it on the dog first. If it doesn't kill it we …"

"You touch that dog and I will kill you. It is all he has left. Maybe you should volunteer then" Jack snarled and John laughed, not phased at all by the anger.

"OK .. OK. I will go find an animal or something. Gotta be a sheep or whatever out here somewhere. Lush farmland" John assured him and Jack glared at him as he motioned of him to go first.

John gave three solid knocks, waited then three more.

The door swung open with Mickey there, gun raised while Owen looked out, then called clear and stepped back.

"Good…. Well done" Jack said as he entered and then froze, Ianto's face telling him there had been an event while they were gone. Stephen sat with Ianto on the sofa, clinging to him as Janet stood guard.

For some reason Jacks' eyes slid straight to the one sniffing in the corner.

"Gwen? Something going on here?"


	42. while you were gone

"Why are you blaming me?" she demanded angrily, rising to storm off but Owen stepped in her way.

"Because you are the one at the epicentre of most shit storms around here!" Owen snarled. "Go on. Tell him, tell Jack what you did."

Everyone was silent, then Ianto sighed softly.

"Stephen wanted to have a bath so I went to search for some clean clothes in his size" Ianto began to speak in a monotone, showing he was not only angry but not wanting to be the one everyone was looking at now "I was gone less than two minutes. I heard Janet growling and came back out to find Gwen standing over Stephen trying to check his neck like he had bloody fleas or something and Enid trying to stop her."

"I need to see how they get in" she simpered "If there was a mark left then we can…"

"You need to stop making yourself expendable" Mickey said softly, almost under his breath.

"So … we have been out there risking our lives to check if we are safe and in here you've been endangering everyone?" Jack asked with incredulity "If he had run? If Janet had stated barking and alerted someone outside we were trying to move along by lying we were alone? Enid had come to tell me what you had done and got shot by insurgents or something?"

Gwen stared at him.

"A mark or scar would be noticed. You don't think a wife or husband would notice their significant other suddenly getting a fucking scar or something?" Owen demanded "Fuck, you are a crazy bitch."

Ianto sighed as he sat next to the boy and took his hands in his own comforting him.

"Right. While you were grabassing about we were out there. About fifteen minutes out there was a camp. Two at the camp. Woman cooking in the open by the flames. A man in the bushes with a weapon. Two more down at the river bathing" John gave a sit-rep "We sit tight until lunchtime, they will move through early in the morning and we wait before checking their camp."

"What if they find us?" Gwen whimpered, shooting over to cling to Rhys who looked annoyed as he totally shoved her off and turned back to the dishes in the sink.

"The one in the bushes was armed? Not those in the water? They left theirs up on the bank?" Ianto frowned. "They showed no fear?"

"What did I just tell you?" John snapped, then frowned back "I said nothing about weapons at the riverside."

"No you didn't. Just the one hiding like she was bait in the open" Ianto canted his head, then made a soft grunting noise. Ianto checked Stephen was Ok then went back into the bedroom, Jack following. Jack watched Ianto shakily pull out a drawer.

"Why did you ask that?" Jack asked as he watched Ianto open and close drawers "What are you looking for?"

"I told you. He needs fresh clothes" Ianto replied, then turned to face him. "Look … It just doesn't make sense that the two at the fire were on edge and the two in the water were not. If …. That's a big IF … if they were not all together why were the water babies not alarmed too? Clearly they left the other two and then dropped pretence. The two by the fire are afraid, the water ones are not. Who do you think are Clean skin?"

Jack stared at him "The fire ones were afraid. He was using her like bait while scanning for the other two who no doubt came back acting scared again."

"Yes. Suits are leading Clean Skins. They are mopping up. Wherever they are heading, it will be a pickup point" Ianto surmised.

"And you couldn't say that out there?" John said behind Jack, making Jack jump. John touched his shoulder "Christ partner. I've never snuck up on you before."

"He never had something to focus on like me before" Ianto countered, then rubbed his face "Look. We have to assume they have an end game here. It's a cleanup happening now. Hopefully this means that once they have their quota or whatever they move on."

"Do you really believe that?" John queried. He was starting to see what Jack could. This was not the man he had been watching the last few days. The man standing before him in the quiet of the bedroom was self assured, strong willed and held himself like a fighter. He had dropped his shields and John felt a surge of interest. This man was strong.

"No" Ianto's hands dropped. "Why do they need more of us for suits if they are leaving? No. I think this is an infestation or … acclimation or whatever. They want this planet. Once they are sure they have everyone they will either drop the suits and show themselves or they like our bodies and will simply keep using them. I don't know, not asked one their opinion ya know? But … I have to think that our only means or escape is total escape. Find an old space jumper they ignored due to its age or something. Get free of the planet and them."

A Spacer" John protested, "Are you mad?"

"You can fly. So can he" Ianto pointed at Jack "Why not?"

"Because some of us are infected already" John shrugged.

"And some have not already taken off? Think this is their first rodeo? Huh? Think they are not scattered throughout the galaxy? To be this sure of themselves, this neatly organised … we will not be letting a virus loose or whatever. These things exist with or without a few running for their lives" Ianto then looked at Jack "Besides. They are just like us. Some are wanting power. Others want to escape. Those here … they do not want to control or conquer. Just survive."

"Besides" Ianto said as he turned away "There is still another danger here and if it's one thing I learnt from stalkers is that they don't give up."

Buckley.


	43. thoughts aired

Andy was picking at his food. And something else. Finally he asked "If we were all easy pickings … I mean all abducted or whatever… why did we not all wind up with those things in us?"

"Blood type, level or psychic ability or scaring … maybe it's just one of those things. Some took, some didn't … Like … didn't like one another or something. If these things have to live in your head then they have to get along with you right? Put one in the wrong head and they rebel?" Owen surmised, Mickey putting aside the knife he was sharpening to listen.

"So … this as an organised thing that stated long before they showed themselves" Mickey agreed "Like … the abductions go back almost a year, right?"

"That's what we've agreed on as the timeline" Jack nodded, moving closer to speak softly "What John and I think is that Tosh needs to work out one of these geological scanners and set it for flesh instead of sediment. See if she can turn it into an x-ray or something. See if there is a way to check us all for these things."

Mickey stared at him for a moment then nodded "Sound like a solid idea. Some of use might not even know we are infected, like sleeper agents or something. Also .. it could stop some of the petty squabbling if we can all be cleared."

"Oh we won't all be" John sighed "Someone here is a match for Buckley. I'm sure of it, still not completely sure who."

"But you lean towards gappy?"

John snorted, and then nodded as they all glanced over at Gwen who was clinging to Rhys' back as he kneaded some dough and ignored her whinging.

"Not him. A man with that level of patience and calm surely would have folded to one in no time flat, she had already beaten him down for them" John said like they were talking about the weather.

"Don't know … we are not all being truthful with one another. Who amongst us has been abducted? I am sure hands stayed down that shouldn't have. I mean ... it stands to reason probably all of us were taken at some stage." Mickey decided to voice his thoughts "Ianto … he is calculating. Calm but I see that tick in the corner of his eye when she starts that whinging. He is so good at hiding himself, they might not have even known he was planet-side. He is the only one here I don't think left the planet. He's only one they either passed by without seeing or looked at and ran like hell from. No symbiote could control him, not a Level One."

"Thank you!" Jack sighed "I've been thinking that too. He is right? Level One?"

"Look, I am a weak four, not even on the radar for most but I know when he is looking at me. He can peel my mind back like the skin of a banana and look right into me. Then he smiles and looks away and I feel this … relief. No. He is in full control of himself, no one or nothing can compete with his PSI level."

"I agree" Jack nodded "John and I are high functioning, I think they left alone those they could not control. Those of us that have abilities like that. I was taken. I know that. I vaguely remember the feeling of flight like falling but up. I dream of it."

"Me too" John said with surprise "Blue light, a sound like music and I am floating. I thought it was … shit. It's that ray thing."

"Yeah."

"I'll talk to Tosh" Mickey finally said as he prepared to rise "People are watching you three. You two and Ianto. Everything you do and say is being analysed and hissed about. Owen is loudly telling people to shut the hell up so I think he and his wife are trustworthy."

"You saying we aren't all?" John was amused now.

"I don't like to trust anyone" Mickey shrugged "My training tells me there is an impostor in here … don't know who but someone is definitely broadcasting."

"Broadcasting" Jack jerked back "Yes. I wonder… Ianto isn't looking. Seeking. He has learnt to pull in and hide, be small. I wonder … I wonder if he lets his shields down and casts … if he might feel another amongst us?"

"And he hadn't already?" John hissed "You think he's on edge because he doesn't like Rhys' sweater? Wake up Jack. He knows. He knows full well someone here is calling Buckley still. Why he is keeping so far apart from everyone except the boy and his dog. He is keeping his back to the wall."

Jack could only agree.

He was too.

There was a traitor amongst them and they had to find out who it was before they were all found.


	44. chewing on something

Ianto's favourite time of the day.

Lock down.

The other locks all engaged and John waved at him as he turned in the doorway to his bedroom and looked back at John still seated at the table cleaning his gun "Good night John. Are you sure…"

"I am fine. Jim wants second shift and if I need anything I will come lick your ear. Promise" John said and he was rewarded with a brief flare in Ianto's eye as he showed rare mirth, giggling softly as he closed the door and engaged the internal locks. John put the cloth down and watched the door close. Damn. Starting to like that guy.

Ianto turned to the beds, looking at the two lumps in them, the running lights around the skirting of the room ensuring Stephen would not wake to the darkness if he had a bad dream. He leaned against the door for a moment or two, just looking at the two lumps then moved to check Stephen was covered, the boy deeply asleep with Janet laying the length of him like a huge cuddle teddy. Ianto find himself leaning over the child to kiss the dog's head goodnight as well, feeing silly as he did it but feeling a need to. Stephen didn't stir.

Ianto then padded over to the other bed, undressing as quietly as possible and then slipping into the covers. He expected Jack to be there, it was not going to be a massive shock to find a warm body but the hands were unexpected, reaching to hook him into a clutch and he may have squeaked with surprise as lips touched his neck.

"Shhhhhh"

Ianto went still, his heart pounding as Jack wrapped himself around him, a leg thrown over and a soft nuzzle to his jaw before sighing and settling. That's it?

Ianto was not sure if he was disappointed or relieved … no demand or request. No hint or attempt. Just … it was quite comfortable really. Jack was was, like … really warm and he felt … nice.

Ianto closed his eyes and listened to the deepening breath of his bed mate, trying to follow.

..

.

.

.

_**Acrid smoke.** _

_**Gunfire in the distance as Jack leaned against a wall, choking out the smoke and he looked up as John passed, slapping his shoulder to show they had to go and Jack nodded, glancing back at the three they were leaving on the ground.** _

_**They were running towards the Sonic Cannon fire, screaming now getting louder as they came across the battle zone, men and women in pieces, some dead and some dying as they choked too, but on their own blood.** _

_**The huge Mandibles of the creature were chewing through the arm of a child who was limp with shocky wide eyes, the whites showing like a spooked horse as she watched this creature remove her limb.** _

" _ **Shit" John spat "Fuckers didn't evacuate them?"**_

" _ **Needed bait" Jack replied as he raised his Sonic Cannon to join those still trying to fight it back towards containment crate the size of a truck.**_

.

.

.

..

Ianto lay in the darkness with his heart fluttering around in his chest. A rat caught in a trap. He always wondered about people saying 'like a bird in cage'. Stupid as a bird would die from the bashing. A rat a however… a rat. Yes. That was the problem. He and Jack were both thinking about danger in their midst. Jack's dream was his warning that they might all die if he didn't protect them. Ianto wondered how often Jacks' subconscious punished him like this, clearly a real memory being used.

At least he now knew John would not flinch in battle. He had looked so young, so handsome .. he now saw why Jack hesitated when arguing with him. Lovers. Affection still there despite something happening between them that was considered a betrayal.

Ianto let his mind wander to those on the other side of the door.

And the one who was a danger.

He knew she was broadcasting to Buckley. Calling for him and even though Ianto could not hear him he knew he must be coming. A good shielder too. She wasn't. She was yelling so loud it was almost deafening and more than once he had reached out to touch her and ask her to tone it done before catching himself.

She would get them all killed at this rate and if not for the fact she had a man protecting her he may have led her away an bled her quietly already. He couldn't though. He knows he should have done it in the first few hours before getting to know her and him. She might annoy but he liked him. He was a good man and clearly needed her right now to keep himself together. Killing her would only make it more likely they lost him too.

Damn it, what a mess.

"Shhhhhh"

Ianto rolled his head to look at Jack, staring at him in the almost dark and Ianto smiled, reaching out to stroke his cheek gently "Sorry. Thinking too loud?"

Jack kissed him. Long and affirming, puling their bodies even closer together so Ianto could feel his dick pressing against his hip, his mouth seeking and Ianto complied as a hand fumbled it's way into his PJs to fondle Ianto's own half interested dick.

Ianto felt a sigh deep in his core as Jack slid down and took him in his mouth. Something that had Ianto panicking for one point eight seconds before lips kissed his inner thigh and Jack rose to look at him questioningly, then nod and kiss him again, this time rolling them so Ianto was on top.

Much better.

Control.

Ianto kissed Jack, letting himself relax into it and as Jack made a soft noise of hunger and need Ianto felt his fears slide away. He could trust this man. He could feel it. Jack would not judge. Would not harm. Would not own or dominate.

Ianto felt Jack guiding him and was momentarily shocked again as he saw Jack wanted him to top in every way.

Total control?

Ianto entered him and cried softly into his neck, trying to muffle the sound lest they wake the boy. Jack held him, rubbing his back and shoulders as encouragement and soon they were rocking in the sheets, lips locked in a kiss as they felt a release coming.

"Oh Ianto, I'm gonna cum" Jack hissed through his teeth and Ianto felt something in him shift, his teeth now finding Jack's neck as he started to move faster, Jack grinning with delight as Ianto forced him down into the mattress with each thrust.

Finally Jack seized him in a bone crushing hug, convulsing beneath him as he came and Ianto let go, filing him with his spunk and going limp in his arms as he let his body react.

"Shit" Jack said after a few minutes of lazy thrusting and grinding in the afterglow "That….shit. You fit me …like … that was exactly what I needed."

"I would say ditto but I hate that word" Ianto whispered as he slid to his side, letting Jack breathe.

Jack looked at Ianto and stroked his cheek softly.

"Bullshit. You love words, even the bad ones" Jack teased "I don't know why that … please know I didn't settle into bed tonight with the intention of having my wicked way with you."

"Good" Ianto replied "Because I think I did."

Jack snorted as he kissed Ianto again and Janet lowered his head once more to find solace.

Good.

Those two finally sorted out their stumbling block and connected.

Now.

He just had to convince them to get rid of her before she gets them all killed.

Shame about him though. If only they could separate them somehow, give him a chance but he knew her death would lead to his as the conection between the two was too strong. Love is a powerful thing. They would have to sacrifice him too, they were connected. He knew Ianto would not agree to it. Maybe the arsehole out there would?

The dream was a good one. A trap. Yes.

Janet considered options.

Could he save the man and sacriifce the woman?


	45. Stephen talks

Stephen was sitting next to John, his eyes drinking in the room as people moved about and finally they had a little space in the corner to themselves. Stephen began to talk. Slowly, softly and without any emption as John's hands stayed their motion, listening intently to the one speaking to him. When done, Stephen cleared his throat and took a bite of the sandwich on the plate in his lap, like nothing had happened but John remained still as a statue computing the conversation.

He then rose and turned to look down at the child, nod and move off.

Stephen took another bite.

John found Jack outside.

He and Ianto were standing in the trees with some thin wire, creating a trip hazard.

"Good idea" he began "I didn't know we had any of that."

"Ianto found it in a music cupboard. Apparently they had puzzles and games in there too. Things to occupy them between shifts, these strings will do the trick." Jack said as he knelt "We found some bells too .. will attach those for a warning system to the smallest trees that might get pushed at."

"Ok" John said, Ianto stopping to listen and look up at him, the interest on his face rare. John was again reminded that this man was intelligent.

"The boy just had a word with me" John said, looking at Ianto who rose and seemed to be the one interested as Jack kept working on wire as he knelt between them "The thing in his head and he have been having a little talk and came up with an idea."

Jack's hands froze.

"Yes?" Ianto said softly "Please tell us John?"

So polite. So calm. "Well … Tosh. Great, you are part of this conversation. Get over here where the others can't hear."

Toshiko blinked but complied, glancing back at the door to the bunker "Yes?"

"OK, your idea to get a piece of mining equipment up to spec for an x-ray scanner thing… how's it panning out?" John said softly.

"Will not work. I've looked at everything we have and I can't work it out" she sighed "too old and degraded."

"But have you told anyone that?"

"No?" she canted her head and looked at him with interest "What's this about?"

"Can you find one that makes a noise when you push a button, but does nothing else?" John asked and she nodded slowly "You see. Stephen's idea is … well him and his worm… we say it does work. It detects worms. We try it on him, it goes off as you push the button. We try the dog … same right? Try me. Nothing. Jack. Nothing. Ianto here … nothing. They will all be watching. Then turn to them and advance. Those that turn their heads to expose their necks are Clean Skin and the one hiding here that is still broadcasting to Buckley will not. Right? She will give herself away with some reson why we cnat scan."

"Brilliant" Toshiko grinned "Stephan thought this up?"

"Yes" Ianto said before john cold admit the symbiote probably had "Can you make it a go?"

"Yes. Found a piece that makes a loud alarm noise, scared the hell out of me. Yeah. We do the boy. Then we do a couple of you, then the dog so it really hits home that the worms cause the noise. It will also reassure them Ianto is clean as he is freakishly clever. Then whoever she is …" she looked at Ianto so she knew he had worked out who even if he was not saying "… she will have to step away from me or risk detection."

"She could call our bluff" John sighed.

"Yes, but she is not clever" Ianto finally spoke "I mean ... she is loud. I hear her and I don't have one in me. She is not thinking clearly, not hiding at all. Not to me. Not to Fen and Janet."

"Fen" Jack whispered "My wife called him that."

"Did she?" Ianto smiled "He asked me to."

The two men shared a moment, John huffing as he said "Get a fucking room."

Blushing now as Ianto looked down and John grinned "We have one and use it ta."

Ianto's blush deepened as Jack laughed happily.

"Right. Toshiko, go make a show of 'fixing' the piece of tech and we will finish these security wires" John said as he turned to look at Ianto again "And you … hold these pliers for me."

Ianto accepted them and watched John start to move for another gap I the tree line, then followed.

Jack sat back on his haunches and watched them working together, surprised by John's decision to accept Ianto and stop needling him. Seems he finally got it. Finally sees. They were destined.

Back in the bunker Toshiko set her tools out on the table and made a show of taking off panels, poking at wires with her tools and making little noises in her throat as she waited for the signal for the fun to begin. She did wonder why Ianto was not happy about this, nervously frowning as he had listened to the idea but surely he knew that had to know. Had to oust her, right?

It was almost like he was saddened that they had to.

He really doesn't like confrontation, does he.


	46. her

Tosh held the 'scanner' with more confidence than she felt, Owen in on the rouse and standing proudly to be the first.

Nothing.

Of course.

She then kept talking about bone density and other things she remembered from her medical training that had no real bearing on anything as she scanned Stephen and pushed the button as agreed. Everyone jumped and glances were shared as she took a deep breath.

"Thank you love" she said softly "sorry it was so loud. Ok. Next?"

John stepped forward as she scanned him, then Jack. Then Ianto stepped forward and everyone held their breath, Ianto not sure if he should be insulted or not at how wide some eyes were as they followed the arcing of the scanner.

Nothing.

As agreed.

She then scanned the dog and pressed the button, everyone again nodding as they knew that one. They looked at Ianto with something akin to apology for doubting him, their fears allayed there.

"OK, who is next?" she asked calmly.

"Do me" Rhys barked "I have to get those pies out soon and need to check them."

She did the sweep and silence thing, more nods as everyone accepted this. Then she turned to find Andy there, his face set with a resigned look "Best do me too. I want to help Rhys."

She did. He moved on to help Rhys as Jim now moved forward. One by one they were scanned without her pressing the alarm button, everyone looking relived as they knew they were clean and being proven so such was a boon.

Finally Gwen was left sitting on the sofa with Enid, both women holding hands as they had watched proceedings. Gwen had been upset when Rhys was scanned, pleased to see him clean and had now watched in silence with her hands clasped in Enid's' against the baby bump.

Ianto glanced at the sofa more than once, letting everyone know he was not happy with them still there and as Toshiko turned to wield the scanner he spoke.

"Come now ladies, you won't feel a thing" he said gently "Those pies smell delicious and we can eat as soon as we are done with this malarkey."

They sat staring at him silently.

"Gwennie" Rhys growled "Stop being a divvy, get up and let Toshiko at you. I'm hungry."

Gwen looked at Enid and then took a deep breath "OK, think it's horseshit though."

She rose and walked to Toshiko as everyone gaped then Martha silently raised her weapon to point it at the one they now knew was the danger. Enid's face never changed, even as she seemed to shrink back into the sofa and her silent screaming for Buckley made Ianto's knees buckle.

"Ianto!"

"It's her" Gwen spun to gaped "Enid. You? It's you?"

Ianto was clutching at his head as Enid's eyes widened to almost glow and the crack of John's hand across her face stopped the agonising pain for Ianto instantly. He slumped to the floor panting as he groaned through the psychic shock.

"No" Andy wailed "No …no…no….Enny?"

She looked at him, her face impassive as she snarled "She always hated that name!"

Andy stopped sobbing and stared at the thing controlling the room "Enid? Is she still in there at all?"

"We live to feed. To conquer. You really thing a simpering little thing like her was a match for me? She died within moments of my consuming her life-force. Such a pitiful little .." she snarled as she started to rise from the sofa only to yelp as Janet bit down savagely on her hand.

Everyone started yelling as Enid struggled up, her large belly in the way as she swing at John, the sound of the weapon fire loud in the small space as she fall forward onto her stomach, the knife in her hand clunking across the floor to land at Andy's feet. He goldfished with shock.

"She's not dead" Ianto panted "Quick."

"Yeah" John roled her over and reached for the knife, his face devoid of fear as he moved it toward her thorax.

"NO The baby ya idiot. The baby. Save the poor little thing before she bleeds out from the chest wound!" Ianto barked, crawling over to seize the knife and cut himself yelping as he dropped the knife and Owen seized it up.

"Get out of the way. I'm the fucking doctor here" he demanded as he fell onto her writhing legs, "Hold her still goddamn it."

People rushed to help as Ianto rose unsteadily and walked over to Andy who was clutching at the bench with wide shocked eyes. He took a tea towel and wrapped his hand, then pulled Andy into his arms as Andy stated to weep. Ianto turned him away from what was happening on the floor, soothing as he rubbed his back and said softly that she didn't know what was happening. Already gone. Already in the next place. This was not her. Anything he could think of to say as Andy cried for his sister, his only remaining family.

Well. And the new life squealing with indignation as Owen yanked it out and struggled to cut the cord as Enid choked and died.

"Oh god" Gwen wailed "It's covered in slime!"

"They come that way ya stupid bitch" Owen snapped "Someone take it, I might be able to …"

Jack snatched the baby and retreated from the huddle as they continued to see what they could do but then Owen said softly "she's gone."

Silence.

Then a soft cry from the bundle and Ianto led Andy over to accept it. Andy turned back to Ianto with the baby between them, the room smelling of blood, gunpowder and death. Jack placed the antique Webley back in its holster and shakily lowered himself to a chair.

Well.

There goes the bait then.

Shit.


	47. clean up aisle three

Ianto was looking at Jack as they considered things, Andy now on the floor stroking his dead sister's face as Owen and Mickey wrapped her, cleaning the floor as they went.

"We needed that worm for bait" Ianto finally whispered and Jack nodded, looking over with a grimace.

"Andy… this baby needs washing, soothing and food. What if you and Ianto take it to the bathroom and try to bathe it a little … me and John will take Enid … the thing that pretended to be her I mean, out to bury her and look for a goat or cow or something. That baby needs milk" Jack pointed out and Andy nodded morosely.

John looked at Jack questioningly, knowing they never cared about bodies before but helped along with Mickey who moved into formation like a good soldier. John wondered when he had served, relieved to find another military man with them.

"Here?" Mickey asked, and then started to dig, carefully removing the sod so they could replace it and hide the grave.

Jack knelt and rolled the body, his knife removed from his pocket, he started to cut the skin on the back of her neck, Owen appearing from nowhere to hiss "I was coming to do that too."

"The others?"

"Ianto had them in knots trying to find something that might pass for bedding and such for the baby. A bottle … he's respectful that one" Owen said as his fingers slid in to feel around. "Had them say a few words over the blood stain, calmed all of them no end."

John rose and stumbled off, coming back a few minutes latter with a small nanny goat "Look what I found. He is following me. I mean … what are the odds that … wait."

"Yeah" Jack said with annoyance "He must be close if he has this with him. Or he somehow managed to control it to come to us when she stated to panic."

"You think?" John looked around their position "You really thing he mind controlled a goat to us?"

"We still have bait" Jack realised what this meant "The baby."

"Come on, surely it doesn't have a …. Shit. Does it?" John gaped.

They all froze, staring at one another then Jack said in a deathly low snarl "We do not speak of this!"

"Agreed" Owen nodded, pulling out the symbiote, "Help me here, these little hairs are entwined in her…"

John knelt and drove his knife into the neck below Owen's hand, then above it and hacked savagely as Owen gaped at him with horror, the entire section of spinal column coming away in his hands

"Well? Intact?" John asked.

Owen looked at it and then made a noise "It moved!"

"Milk" Jack barked "That's what it's for. Not the baby. The Symbiote. She kept asking for milk. They must use it … shit. The boy drinks it like it's going out of fashion. He has been complaining of being thirsty for days. Gives it to the dog too. Milk. They need milk."

"So ... milk it" Owen said calmly "Get me a jar big enough for this thing to go in and we really need a cow."

"On it" Mickey rose and dusted off his clothes, then tore off.

"Does he even know if he's going in the right direction?" John asked as he watched the man disappear, the dreadlocks bouncing with each step.

"Does it matter?" Jack asked "He will get a damned cow! Yehaw."

John grinned at him "I missed you. Come on, Owen is right. Milk. We still have a bargaining tool, we still have what he wants, but now she doesn't have the body to help herself."

"Is she still broadcasting though?"

"No" Ianto said, making them all jump and Owen may have squealed … a little … "I can't hear it. They must have needed our brain power or something to do it. That's why they needed us, not just our bodies, our brains. Without one, she is helpless."

"Good" Owen said calmly "suggestions?"

"A jar with a lid?"

Owen blinked then started to snigger at the crass suggestion, the tongue in cheek humour that tickled him intensely "Clever bastard, aren't ya."

"Yep" Ianto popped the p.

"Come on, if he is getting a cow we will need somewhere for it. Shit, will sort of give us away." Jack sighed.

"We knew we were not staying here forever. This just speeds up the plan to get out of Dodge" Ianto assured him "We get an old spacer with a replicator we don't need the cow anymore, we can just replicate each full bottle."

Jack grinned "You really want a spacer. You really want off this rock."

"Yeh" Ianto nodded "It's all gonna burn."

Jack's smile faded, "why do you say that?"

John felt a chill.


	48. what's in a name?

"It feels like it. Like ... their end game is to nuke what they can't have. To take what they want and decimate the rest so their tracks are covered. Remember those planets in the Nile sector? That one over in the Fourth Reach? They said they were accidents. Solar surges or gas eruptions that we idiot human settlers ignited. What if they were these? They come, rape and pillage, then burn it all to the ground?" Ianto hissed.

"Shit, hell of a leap from a simple snatch and grab" John said, then he nodded "He's right. There were reports of strange behaviour before the lines of communication went dead for the Fourth Reach. Talk of Zombies. They clearly were not good hosts like we are."

"Makes sense to me. I followed that, didn't like it one bit, why I stupidly thought this far out in the black would be safe. Whatever visitors or whatever would not reach here in the long haulers unless for a specific reason, less tourists and bloody trippers. Stupid. I don't think any planet is safe while they are roaming." Ianto rubbed his face "Fen's one is clearly rebelling, more might too but again this is a reason they might keep sweeping. We can only trust one another now. We can only believe the words from one another, anyone else we meet is a potential danger. I want to get out. We will be safe in a spacer. A little metal bubble out there in the back. Can't exactly knock and ask for a bowl of sugar then suck our brains out of nasal cavity or turn us into them, right?"

"I like him" John said dreamily "can we keep him dad?"

Jack nodded. "Plan. Let's think in it and talk tonight when the civilians are asleep."

"Jack. None of us are innocents now, none of us. We are all targets."

Mickey pointed at Ianto as he agreed "Yep."

"OK. After a meal when we are all calm, we will talk it over and get everyone's take on this." Jack said as he reached out to pat Ianto's arm. "OK?"

The sound of a baby in distress had Ianto making a noise and turning to go back inside, his voice fading as he spoke to Andy who was coming towards him with the baby getting louder, then the door closed and the men were left in the silence of the woods looking at one another.

"Right then" Owen said after a few minutes of staring at the military might around him.

"Who can milk a cow?"

.

.

.

.

.

"It all happened so fast, I didn't even see … boy or girl?" Ianto asked softly.

"Boy" Andy said softly "A little boy, looks perfect."

"Ah, good" Ianto was not sure what to say, nothing right for comfort right now and he was sure Gwen had already said all the wrong things judging from the glares she was getting. "Have you a name yet?"

"I don't…no. Ah. I mean … if it had been a girl I could have called her Enid after her Mama but … I don't know." Andy frowned "Me Da was Andrew like me. Drew mostly. I don't … I don't think she woud have picked that for him."

"Did she have a favourite actor or singer?" Ianto tried to think "Someone she liked? Would like thought of as a part of her heart?"

Andy stared at him blankly.

_OK. Not much help there._

Ianto looked around for inspiration "A favourite song?"

"Amazing Grace? Doesn't help" Andy frowned and Ianto smiled softly as he patted his arm.

"No, but you are getting there. See? If it had been a little girl called Grace you would think of Enid right?" Ianto crooned "Come on. A boy version."

Andy stared into space for a while as Ianto watched Gwen kneel to help with the blood stain, her face streaked with tears as she spoke quietly to Rhys.

"Ava Maria" Andy finally said "That stupid song sung in too high a note to ever be sung along to. She used to play it on the piano to annoy me."

"Ava Maria. So … Avon? Avis?" Ianto sighed as he saw Andy would not get the idea after all "Or maybe the fact it is sung by a woman or man like that … Tenor?"

"Tenor?"

"Yes, a singer is called a Tenor, a high pitched one." Ianto nodded.

"I like Tanner better."

_Finally!_

Ianto almost gave away his relief as he nodded "Well … Tanner Ennis. Ennis for Enid."

Andy shone as he called out to everyone "I named him. Tanner Ennis Davidson!"

"Ted" Stephen said dreamily as he stroked his dog's fur "Initials are Ted. I like that."

"Holy shit, they are too" Andy said as he looked down at the child "A little Teddy? She collected teddies."

"Teddy for a nickname, sounds like Tanner too. Tanner when in trouble or Tanner Ennis when gonna get serious timeouts" Ianto smiled as he let his arm snake around Andy to comfort and reassure "I like it. I really do. Look at those big green eyes. Lovely."

Andy finally relaxed as he saw that he was not in this alone.

Tanner Ennis Davidson the Teddy Bear.

What a mouthful.


	49. plan and comfort

Ianto moved in the bed, rolling to face Jack. He knew he was awake too, he could feel it and they took a few moments to look at one another before Ianto whispered "We need to move."

"I know" he whispered back "The nearest space port of in New Denver, east of here."

"At least three days on foot, been thinking on that" Ianto frowned, his eyes sliding around the room "They incapacitated the vehicles up top … they cannot penetrate dirt as we seem safer down here… any idea if the old crew transporters down here are sill operational?"

Jack stared at him then hissed "Fucking genius!"

"You think?"

"John and I will explore the passages later. They usually had a vehicle bay close to living quarters, we only need a flat bed we can all fit on and a map of the system which hopefullly is either in here somewhere or close by, maybe on one of the vehicles." Jack grinned "Power will be the thing. Do they need battery packs."

"If … big of ….if we find some, we will need a top recon. The baby needs things, we do too. We need to get a feel for the nearest township and do a little recon and pillaging to get us where we need to go." Ianto reached out, his hand touching Jack's' chest, the smooth skin being stroked gently then he splayed his hand out over Jack's heart.

Jack kissed him.

"I am scared but …I am beginning to feel a little hope" Ianto looked into Jack's eyes again "I think we might make it."

Jack grinned "Yeah, me too Tiger."

Jack reached out, cupping Ianto's head and stroking his temple with his thumb, something he found himself doing lately that seemed to comfort both of them. Ianto's eyes softened and he smiled back, moving closer so they could share a gentle kiss.

"Mommy?"

Both men froze, then Ianto shimmied out of the bedding to go check the child, no doubt in the throes of a nightmare. Ianto touched him, trying to soothe and comfort, much as he had that day as they had both hid in the house listening to her fight for her life.

Ianto had been so torn.

He had wanted to save her but knew she was already dying from the blood trail and her psychic cries, finding the child and dog hiding behind the sofa galvanising him into helping them escape before going back to her. He knew she was too far gone to save but couldn't just leave her to die alone. He had told the boy to run, run for where family was then he had gone back in.

Of course he now knew the poor child had run for the local pub, where his grandfather went the most in the hopes of finding him. Thank the gods Rhys and Gwen had found the boy, kept him safe and reunited them. Ianto felt a great sense of sorrow for the loss of the woman, she had fought bravely, glancing at him as he has smuggled the child past the doorway though her blood and he had seen the relief then upon his return to whisper that he was away. He had held her, stroking her hair and whispering over and over again that the boy was way, safe and running like the wind.

The smell of that man seemed to fill the small room. The stink of madness and Ianto knew it was not real, the child was projecting what he remembered the most for that day. The threat still lingering, following. After a while he seemed to settled again, snuggling into the pillows and breathing deeply as Ianto looked over his little shoulders at the dog whose eyes glowed in the half light.

"He's close isn't he" Ianto whispered to it and it huffed softly back.

Ianto nodded "I know, I am moving us as best I can but we both know there may be more losses and I do not want that. We will get away, I will not let him get you. Either of you. I know it is you he seeks. I hope one day there is a way for you to explain his fixation with you. There are others right? Dissidents? Those who are not part of the hive? Runners? Seeking a quiet life away from the collective?"

Another soft chuff and a deep sigh as the dog settled, Ianto reaching over the child to stroke it's head "I know. Sorrow is not just for the weak …. It is our compass too. It leads us as strongly as compassion and duty. Without these feelings you are not …. real. Without these feelings you are not a living creature, merely an entity. You have to stop blaming yourself. You know madmen like him will always find a way to shit in your shoes. Her death was not your fault. Had he not done it, she would have gone in the cull. Right? Stop going over it, you only upset the boy. Tell your partner that the only way we will all survive it to look forward. I will look back for all of us, believe me."

The dog closed its eyes and seemed to relax more, the boy sighing deeply as the two things communed and agreed that Ianto was right. Punishing themselves for the boy's pain did not help or lessen it, only brought it to the front.

Ianto slid back into bed and Jack pulled him tight "I heard you. They are going over Alice?"

"The one in the dog … he is the leader of the two and feels responsible as this Buckley is clearly looking for his mate who was in Enid. Found the area where he had left her and in his madness went into the wrong house, Andy and Enid living just a town over. They think they should have helped her, saved her but their fear galvanised them to run. I told them too, I slid them past her as she fought with him and told Stephen to run, to find you. Why he ran for the pub where Rhys and Gwen scooped him up. I could have fought him instead, tried to save her but she was already mortally wounded … he is so strong and the fear of falling too, then the boy might have…. I chose. I am sorry Jack, I chose in that moment between your daughter and her son and chose to save him. I saved him."

"Thank you" Jack said softly, his throat constricting with emotion "She would have wanted that, if given a chance to scream it at you, she would have screamed his name. She died seeing that, seeing you with him right?"

"I went back in after I saw the boy and dog into the trees, I did go back but I was too late" Ianto felt tears as he stroked Jack's face "I held her and told her he was away. Told her he was free and running like the wind. She looked … at peace."

"Thank you" Jack repeated, his hands finding tears as well, taking Ianto's face in his grip to kiss him "She did not die alone. She died with hope in her heart for the only thing she loved in the entire universe. Stephen."

"She loved you too" Ianto corrected him "She said something about her dad. She said…. 'Dad will save him, the one thing he is good at is being a hero' she did think about you."

Jack was undone, a soft sob as he let his forehead touch Ianto's and they held one another as he mourned his daughter. His opinionated, sassy … gorgeous daughter.

She did not die alone.

.

.

..

Sorry guys FF is shitting itself again, having ot go the long way around to post today GRRRRRRRR


	50. transportation

Jack and Ianto went over their thoughts at breakfast, John perking up as he agreed and Mickey immediately offered to help as well. Everyone listened with interest over the toast, the last of their bread until Rhys baked later in the morning.

"Good, me and Ianto go left, you two go right. One of the teams is sure to find the vehicle bay. I wish we had walkie-talkies or something" Jack sighed.

"We do" Ianto said as he considered "Fen and Janet. They can communicate over about four miles. Four? Five? Really? Well, we will not have to go further than half a mile in each direction I think. The dog can go with John and Mickey, Fen with me and Jack. Then when one team finds it, the other will know. The dog will bark and run back towards us. Fen will stop and turn, telling us Janet is calling."

"Five miles" Jim said softly "He could be that close."

"He could be that far" Ianto corrected, looking at Gwen who had paled as Buckley was entered into the conversation "I think he will stay on the outskirts for fear of detection. I do not think he even knows about Fen and Janet. He is only focused on Enid … now what remains."

They all turned to look at the jar of milk, the thing in it seeming to wave at them as it moved.

"Still alive then" Junior huffed.

Ianto nodded as he looked at John's son and saw the youthful need to prove himself in front of his girl so he said "Junior, I would appreciate it if you kept on eye on the top door. We don't want anyone coming in and although it's locked now, daytime topside that we are most likely to be stumbled on. I would feel a lot safer knowing you were sitting under it with a gun."

The young man instantly puffed up, he father looking at Ianto with surprise and gratitude. He also knew his son was champing at the bit to do something that proved his mettle. They started out, Jack glad of a moment along with Ianto …well Fen was with them but you know what I mean …. Letting the time pass without talking, just being together for a while.

"I had a pet Ferble once" Ianto said out of the blue, startling Jack, Stephen turning with a look of interest. "He was bright orange so I called him Rusty. Never came when I called him."

Stephen snorted, amusement in his face that had Jack's heart flipping over.

"My sister had a purple one. I was secretly jealous, I love purple" Ianto sighed "Pretended it was weird and ugly. Mine was sooooo much better. She fell for it. I was so relieved when she kicked up and wanted mine. Thought it was more obedient. Da gave in, always did. Of course … it was mad but not as mad as hers. Loved him. She had called him Sparkle. I mean … what sort of maniac calls something with sharp teeth that? Poor little fluff ball"

Stephen giggled softly, Jack wanting to kiss Ianto for the kindness he was showing.

"What's your sister's name?" Stephen asked.

"Rhiannon. She is Rhiannon, she's a Mam now too. Her own little boy and girl, hope that they are as evil as we were at their ages, serves her right" Ianto smiled.

"Do you see her?"

"No darling. I left her behind with all the bad things that wanted to hurt me. She did not want to come and I had to get far away so she would be safe back there. I ran out here to the end of the universe so it wouldn't find me. Silly me. Something else wants to kill me now" he laughed and Stephen did too, Jack joining in as they turned a corner.

"LOOK!" Stephen cried out "I FOUND IT!"

"Well done son, you have" Jack said happily "Tell Janet to come this way. Let's see … as switch… a switch …ah."

The place was bathed in light and they found themselves in the right place. Transports sat around. Sort of like busses with the roof cut off with seats and space for equipment. They searched for keys and then Jack walked along checking against the number on the sides to the numbers on the key rings, flicking the keys onto the seats.

"Right, start turning keys, let's see if one will fire up" Jack called out, watching Stephen light up as Ianto helped him into a seat and showed him how to set the igniters. Stephen looked over at him.

"Grandy? Will the batteries not be flat?"

"These orange painted ones are Goramitton. They have a battery life of a hundred years" Jack called back softly "We have problems such as crashing and such, these are supposed to be run every month or so when on down time, not sit for years but we might get…. Lucky!"

Ianto grinned at him as the one he had just tried fired, the sound loud in the small space.

"Keep going" Jack yelled, "We would be best with two, if one breaks down before we get to the spaceport we will still have a back-up."

Ianto saluted, looking so sweet Jack could not help but steal a kiss.

For luck.


	51. Antigonish

****

They were barrelling along, the crunching tyres loud as rocks popped under the weight of the Transports. John was in the lead with Rhys sitting beside him riding shotgun …. Literally. It sat across his knees pointing out.

Jack followed with Ianto beside him, Jim sitting in the back to watch their arses. Andy had wanted to stay with Ianto, fair enough. He had that way of pleasing Tanner with a lovely singing voice. Junior had wanted to be with his father, like Gwen with her man … you get the idea. The front Transport carried John, Rhys, Gwen, Junior with Sally and Martha with Mickey sitting on the back so he was looking at Jack and Ianto.

Transport two had Jack, Ianto, Fen, Janet, Owen and Tosh, Andy with baby and Jim.

"Marcus" Ianto said softly as they rumbled along "Didn't they have a Marcus from Owen's Group? Or did I imagine him? Quiet, a little … unnerving."

Jack looked at him with a frown "No, I don't remember anyone else love."

Ianto considered this. He definitely remembered Marcus. He didn't speak, just sort of … watched …holy shit. Why had they left him behind without a second thought? Ianto went still as a thought floated into his mind, a solid one. Marcus was not real? No. He was. He remembered him. He was close to Martha like … a brother?

They stopped to eat, John and Jack going over the maps with Mickey and Jim, Gwen trying to be part of it but really just noise in the background as they ignored her. Ianto saw his chance and slid over to Martha.

"Martha?" he said softly "Can I ask you about Marcus?"

She swung to gape at him, then to his shock she slumped as if devastated "Don't tell me I'm sleep talking or something."

"What?"

She sighed "He… we had just lost him when we met up with you. He was my brother. He died to get me to safety. Why Mickey is keeping so close to me … he tried to save him but … he fell."

Ianto now sat and relaxed. A ghost. Shit. In a place where the dead were snatched up to a ship first they had nowhere to haunt down here. He died down here though, he died … he stayed with her to make sure she was OK before moving on.

Ianto felt both sad and relieved to find the missing team member that was niggling was never really there at all. He considered telling her but knew she was healing so … what would it solve? Besides, 'I see dead people' on top of the whole freaky events happening might be too much for anyone to handle. Another reason why he had picked a planet with little history.

Less ghosts.

He had never seen them like that though. So solid, so real. They were normally a feeling or suggestion of a figure …. Smoke. He was pondering this as Jack settled next to him and placed a hand on his knee making him jump. They both smiled. "You OK?"

Ianto was going to reply when Stephen settled on the other side of him, his face pale in the half light "What did you ask her?"

"About her brother. Marcus" Ianto replied.

"Ah. The silent one that was not really there. Like the poem."

"You saw him too?" Ianto was interested now as he looked at the child who nodded, then went to find his dog, leaving Ianto staring after him.

"Ianto?"

" _Yesterday upon the stair_

_I met a man who wasn't there_

_He wasn't there again today_

_I wish, I wish he'd go away_

_When I came home last night at three_

_The man was waiting there for me_

_But when I looked around the hall_

_I couldn't see him there at all!_

_Go away, go away, don't you come back any more!_

_Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door_

_Last night I saw upon the stair_

_A little man who wasn't there_

_He wasn't there again today_

_Oh, how I wish he'd go away"_

Ianto whispered "A poem called Antigonish."

Jack stared at him then admitted "That's creepy."

"When we met the team, Martha and Mickey had a man standing with them. He didn't speak, just seemed to be intent on following her around. I don't know when he left, when he was no longer here, it was like … you could see him out the corner of your eye but not think about him. I knew his name was Marcus. I heard it strongly. Marcus. I asked her about him. He died mere hours before we met them."

"A ghost?" Jack frowned.

"I always felt spirit. Part of the enhanced senses but never seen one solid like that. Why it never occurred to me he was one." Ianto leaned back and accepted a sandwich "been chewing on it. Do you think they are doing that? To aid those still on the ground doing sweeps they are projecting some sort of … enhancement so they can communicate? Makes a natural ability stronger as well?"

Jack looked over at Stephen who was sitting silently with his dog "Makes sense. They need our bodies to commune, the power. If we are all spread out now, just small pockets to round up … it is plausible they are sending out some sort of wave to make their soldiers more aware or powerful. Fuck. Help the bounty hunter ones track … Buckley. You are thinking of him aren't you? Whatever this is, its why he is still tracking us?"

"Yes. Killing her gave us space, he's confused now but I think still there in the back of everything. They can't communicate anymore but still … like a scent or a feeling … he knows the direction she is in."

"So we should kill her" Jack said bluntly.

"What if she is the only reason we are not dead? They do not know she is incapacitated. He can still feel something, might think we have a shielding technology. If the signal stops completely, will they rain down hell in is? Scoop us up. Are they letting us run as we are scooping up people, making the group larger?"

"I agree with eye candy" John said from their left where he has listened quietly "I never saw him but … yeah. I felt something with her that disappeared as we moved into the tunnels. Felt something in that town too. Where we met, something watching us. Gone now."

"Because whatever it is, it doesn't penetrate dirt" Ianto agreed "Yes. Well done John. Yes. Down here they cannot find us to insert memories or whatever, to trick us?"

"Trick you" he corrected Ianto "Only you could see him."

"No. Stephen could too" Ianto looked over, "And Janet. It's another device, another trick alright. Jesus. What if they try again once we are topside?"

Jack paled as he stared at Ianto.

He had a point.

"They we move like the fucking wind and don't stop for anyone we see approaching us. Could be a trap. We are all we can be, this is out family. Our team. We will not let anyone else in. Once topside we run like fuck and get out of Dodge. Like you say, we stick together." John said strongly and another voice chimed in.

"I agree" Jim nodded, Mickey beside him with the map still in his hands as Jim spoke "We find the space port. Only you two recon and see if one can fly, since you are the ones who can fly them in the first place … come back and get us then … we move like greased pigs."

Ianto looked at him and made a little squealing noise before he could stop himself.

The tension was gone the instant John started to laugh.

Yes.

They would need their wits about them.

Ianto felt relief in the trust on the men's faces as well. They clearly had forgotten Marcus... And Owen talking to him like he was real even as they did not count him in their hourly body counts. Ianto looked over at Owen with renewed interest. Was he hiding abilities too? Did he even know he had them?

.

.

.

.

Ahhhhh Chapter 29. You all forgot him didn't you ... the one who looked slightly freaked out?


	52. going up?

Ianto decided not to freak Owen out, this obviously a new concept he was not even aware of. Whatever those things were sending in radio waves from their ships, it was scrambling their heads. Who could they trust?

"So, we think that's the best option" Jack finished his speech, telling everyone why they would accept no more into the group and why they should move with speed. A little bit of bullshit rolled in glitter but everyone seemed to accept it, even as Stephen's eyes slid to meet his.

"We have enough for now though … Ianto will stay with us?" Gwen's plea was raw and he nodded.

"I want off-world. Like the old saying goes, "Who do I have to fuck around here" pardon my French there Fen. Well … I have developed … feelings for Jack and would like to stick with him. Since he seems to like you lot …I'm stuck with you" Ianto shrugged and everyone grinned at his fake bravado.

Well, let's get moving. If we turn left at the next junction and continue for another ….ah…" John was working something out on the edge of the paper with a pen then he said "Two hours. Then start checking for ladders or ramps heading up. A space pad should be nearby."

"Then you and Jack can scout it out after dark" Ianto nodded as he accepted the baby, Andy hissing that he needed a pee.

Ianto started to sing as he rocked the baby, Tanner smiling as he cooed softly. They say newborn babies don't smile but … he did seem to respond as Ianto stroked the little head, crooning down at him.

"You are a natural"

"I love kids. Had thought of myelf as a Tad, ya know? One of the hardest parts of accepting my damage is that I will never… well. I'm not Tad material now" he sighed softly and Jack took a chance.

"Why not?"

"I'm damaged goods. Scared, beaten and so screwed up. I mean, what sort of father would I be? My own father was a terrible man, a bully. Then I fell for a woman who had an affair with my best friend. Then I got a stalker who tried to kill me, controlled and owned me … no. My heart can't love properly now" Ianto looked at Jack and canted his hed "There is not much left of it, all burned and constricted as it is."

"But I still see it" Jack whispered.

"But who would want the dregs? Who would want this?" Ianto snorted.

"Me" Jack said, sliding closer, everyone stopping their conversations to watch as Jack placed a hand on Ianto's knee, leaning in "Me. I would want you. All of you. Good. Bad. Ugly. Handsome. Funny. Sexy. Intelligent …. So intelligent. Did I say sexy?"

Ianto blinked, then blushed softly as the baby snoozed in his arms "Jack. I…"

Jack kissed him, letting him feel his desire as he squeezed his knee then sat back "Feel that? Think that is nothing?"

"Jack … there are many things I could say about you but nothing? No. Not that" Ianto smiled, "I just … this is all I am. I don't get any better."

Jack laughed softly as he rose and signaled to John that they were going, offering a hand to Ianto "Come on. Let's boogie."

Ianto looked up at him with surprise, then smiled "Me Mam used to say that. Let's boogie Woogie like the bugle boy."

"I loved that Song" Jack grinned, Ianto showing confusion. "A song. It's a song, the boogie woogie bugle boy of company B."

"I would like to hear that song" Ianto smiled, "a bit of my mam."

"I would like to teach you. I would like to do many things with you, not all of them dirty but there are a few of those on the list too ya know you sexy man" Jack winked and Ianto snorted.

"Get me into the black, away from this danger and we will have all the time we want to … dabble, sir!" Ianto shot back, Jack snorting as John laughed out loud.

"Sooner we move, then the sooner we have that in motion" Jack started to pack up and Ianto laughed softly as he helped. Soon they were moving, the crunching almost comforting now as Ianto resisted the urge to look up.

Buckley still there in the back of his mind, looking. Seeking.

.

.

.

.

"There, ahead!" Jack heard John's call and he glanced at Ianto as the vehicle in front took a sharp turn and then started to ascend, the noise of the engines changing pitch until they stopped at huge blast doors, the angle of the ramp making them all feel weird sitting on their seats so they all got out as the power brake engaged, looking at Jack and John.

"It's dusk" John said softly "We give it another half hour then we go see if we are as close as I think we are."

"I smell fuel" Jack agreed "It's within walking distance. It's there. Gods, we just have to have faith that there is a nice big old spacer sitting there."

Ianto nodded, the baby still in his arms as he looked at Jack with trust and affection.

Jack had to get this right.

He and Stephen had a chance at a new life.

With him.


	53. finding a boat out of here

Jack took the lead, John following as Mickey plastered himself against the doors to peer out through the small peep hole. Soon they were invisible to him, gone in the mist and darkness.

"Fucking cold" John hissed softly "This mist is creepy."

"John, hush" Jack said without anger, knowing John was a talker when stressed and John took control of himself, flanking Jack as they walked between ships peering in to see if they were viable or not.

Many were sleek new models, locked down with so many security protocols even their own owners had trouble getting in. No. No good for their needs. Jack was quietly cursing when John made a noise and pointed.

A firefly.

Holy shit.

An old junker sitting majestically like she was a large dragon looking over them all and Jack crept closer to read the name on her hull.

MYFANWY

"What sort of name is that?" John asked with confusion, taking a picture of it.

Jack looked at it long and hard, it reminded him of another he had traveled on on occasion, with the other captain also being a bit naughty and fun too. Mal was thankfully nowhere near this madness, probably still smuggling with his pretty Serenity unaware of the problems here.

Not that he hadn't had his own share of spacer madness.

Jack stood regarding it, knowing he could both fly her and fix her if need be. A good vessel, straight from the wars he and John fought in, wore the coats in and lost in. He glanced at John who was grinning as he thought the same thing.

This could work.

"We need to get in" Jack finally hissed "She's powered down. Vacated. No idea how long. Not even completely coupled. We need to fill those fuel cells."

"Yeah, no fuel needed, fuel cells. That's right. This old girl runs on battery packs!" John said with glee "Can recharge in an ion storm, right?"

"Yeah, no need to land or couple at a space port once she had enough juice to run." Jack agreed as he slid his hands over her belly and a soft click told them his VM still worked as a key too. They watched her belly open and a small ladder descend.

"What, no lowering of the ramp?" John looked at Jack.

"Do we want to announce what one we are in? Anyone watching might see that … might also sneak in behind us" Jack reminded his partner, always a beat behind him in these things "This way we secure behind ourselves, keep tight."

"Right. Yeah" John shook his head as he agreed he was rusty.

They clambered up and John closed the hatch then turned to watch Jack stalking around the loading bay. Lights were low lit showing that she was not totally powered down. Her crew had not expected to stay planet bound this long. Sad. They hadn't come back either so … they hadn't stayed in the end had they.

"She still has auxiliary on" John hissed, "Let's check her fuel cells."

Jack motioned with his hand as he checked the berths and as he had thought, she was empty. The mess was well stocked and the working replicator was a relief, Jack checking if it worked with excitement. Tick. He settled in the captain's chair and flicked some switches as it all came back to him, watching her power up and tell him she was still coupled to the recharger and about eighty percent.

"Eighty?" John said making him jump inwardly, not that he would ever let John see that he had startled him.

"They had her on standby so she stopped charging. No doubt they expected to power her up while gong through pre-flight to finish the charging but never came back. Once we fire her up she will only need an hour or so to be fully go. With her outer shell able to charge on the go ... jump across several parsecs in a few days."

"Perfect. Plenty of space, we can settle in and spend months in the black. Fucking years" John said happily, "If I could survive without blowing something up that long."

"You never change" Jack laughed as he swung in the chair turning to face his oldest friend "you know … your boy is a good young man. I am pleased for you, I sort of thought you would never settle down, was sad to hear she moved on but glad you kept him on. He's the best of you, you know that?"

"I never thought I could stand living on one spot so long but this is his home and … for him. For him I tried. I gotta tell you though, I am itching to get this bird out there in the black and open those engines up" John sighed, "I miss the sound of space."

"You can tell me something else" Jack said just as calmly and John raised an eyebrow. "Can you see someone out there under that X-Wing or is it just my imagination?"

John grinned then leaned out to peer out into the darkness, their running lights still too low to be seen from the ground.

"Well. Bugger me" he said with wonder "Someone watched that classic with Vin Diesel… what was it? Pitch Black didn't they?"

Jack and John gaped as the person down below swung the torch in a slow arc like some weird dance move as they staggered along with the other hand held out.

The two men looked at each other as they could tell exactly who it was.

"Can I fire the cannon?" John asked with a sweet smile.


	54. oops

Jack slid from the hatch and checked covertly for anyone else in the vicinity before he ran for the next vessel's landing gear, hugging himself to it so he would not have a silhouette. John watched from the cockpit of the Myfanwy with trepidation as Jack tried to get closer to the fucktard.

"Gwen!" Jack hissed and she squeaked, swinging the light at him so he slipped behind the landing gear and closed his eyes so he would not be blinded.

.

.

.

"Should just let me shoot her' John muttered as he slid from the cockpit, looking longingly at the controls for the weaponry he hoped were actually hot and not on need of restocking. With his luck nothing was loaded.

.

.

.

She stumbled past and Jack seized her, her scream shrill before he could clap his hand over her mouth and he shook the shit out of her, causing the torch to drop and shatter.

"Shut up or I will break your fucking neck" he snarled "you stupid bitch. What the hell are you doing out here?"

"I thought you might need backup" she whined as she writhed in his arms and he pulled her back under the fuselage of a low rider. The scuffing of footsteps drew closer and she seized Jack's arm with fear as she finally realised the danger they were in.

.

.

.

John was in the belly of the Myfanwy tearing at the boxes and cursing wildly, none had ammo, none could help as he glanced again the screen beside him that showed the figure stalking Jack and Gwen. Frantically he tore into another box.

.

.

.

.

Jack and Gwen shuffled as quietly as they could around the vessel as the boots moved on the other side, her eyes were wide as she plastered herself against the vessel, Jack covering her as he tapped her shoulder to tell her to move again.

He was going to find them, Jack knew from the soft scrabbling in the back of his mind that John was screaming with rage in the other vessel. No ammo. Great.

The grunt was soft, then the boots seems to scuff a lot and a soft yelp.

"Jack?"

Jack looked under the vessel at the boots still moving like he was dancing, another set of… "Ianto?"

"Shhhhh" Ianto hissed "He's close."

"What?" Jack knew, even with the shielding Ianto had in place that even he could not penetrate, he knew Ianto was still feeling Buckley out there somewhere. This was not Buckley. Jack slid around to look at the body Ianto was now allowing to slide down the side of the vessel to land in a soft thump. Empire clothing. One of those bastards. Jack felt no sorrow for this death, his own Regulators had fought these arseholes. They were dirty, the lot of them.

"Another scavenger" Ianto said softly "I didn't … he didn't feel right. I don't like killing. I don't."

"Well done" Jack replied, unable to find any other words as Gwen clung to the back of his jacket, then Jack looked at the Myfanwy as the gun turret suddenly moved, swinging over them. Finally. Ammo acquired? Typical. Late as per usual John.

"Myfanwy" Ianto said softly and Jack looked at him with surprise.

"You know how to pronounce it?"

"Should do" Ianto snorted "Its Welsh. A fine name for a fine lady."

"Yes. Welsh, like us" Gwen agreed as she looked at it too "What are the odds, in the middle of this shit storm we find a piece of home?"

"I don't believe in odds" Ianto replied as he started to push the body under the vessel with his foot "This is not a random happening. It's a sign. We take it. She's here for us."

"Agreed" Jack nodded "We want her. She's Firefly class, I can fly her, so can John without any bother."

"I fly those in my flight simulator, those and something called a spitfire" Ianto whispered "I love old things."

"Good" Jack couldn't help it as he felt the soft flirting between them. Middle of a crisis and they are flirting. Gods, this man is more interesting by the day "I am so old you must really like me."

"Maybe" Ianto grinned back "Now then Captain. Who do I have to screw to get on this boat?"

"Oh, now Mister Jones. That old line? Again? You need some new material. Damn, I will have to act now!" Jack laughed softly "Come on, let's get on board and decide our next move."

Gwen went to grab the ladder John had lowered and Jack seized her wrist "Listen here you. This is not a done thing. You fucked up. If you endangered anyone back there or do anything that might, I will blow you from a fucking airlock, do you get me?"

She clambered up with a red face and John teach down to hook her under her arms, pulling her in and then slapping her hard to spin her into the bulkhead "You silly bitch. Maybe he should have killed you too, blamed Buckley!"

"Enough" Ianto said as he appeared at the portal "It's not helping anyone right now to lose your temper."

"Yah" John snorted "Nuff said."

"Gwen. Sit over there and be quiet while we sort out our next steps" Ianto demanded getting out of the hatch and looking back as Jack's hand became viable patting Ianto's' arse "And stop that befoe I cut it off!"

"His hand?" John asked with glee "Or the other bit that wants a pat?"

Ianto snorted with mirth as Jack slammed the hatch and waggled his eyebrows.

Cheeky man.


	55. ready?

John and Gwen agreed to stay on the Firefly to keep it humming while Jack and Ianto went back to get everyone else, the unspoken warning to him from both other men not to kill her while they were gone. Gwen caught it and although she didn't have the gift she somehow knew his intention and their matching frowns at him so she shut herself in the loo.

They got back to chaos, Gwen had left the place in a shambles and Rhys was almost beside himself "Gwen! Did you see her? Is she OK?"

"Yes. Yes. She's on the vessel we found that is suitable, John is guarding it and we will move as soon as we can, before dawn." Jack said as he looked over at Stephen who was cuddling Janet to him with wide eyes.

"She did something to the baby" Owen snarled "Made it scream. We all ran to it and she slipped out. I want to slap her silly."

"Don't worry, John already did" Ianto assured him. "Is Tanner OK?"

"He's quiet now" Andy said as he moved closer to Ianto so Ianto could see "I don't know what she did, the screaming was horrible. She hurt him, I know she did."

"He seems fine, let's check him" Ianto said, looking over at Owen who rolled his eyes and grumbled that he had already tried to do so. "Yes, but not with everyone here. Come on, let's all calm down. Seeing the boy is OK will calm us all more."

They laid him on the table and Ianto cooed softly, keeping him interested as they carefully unrolled him and checked him over, Tosh sighing "there. Look, a little red mark there on his leg. She pinched him?"

"Hell of a pinch" Mickey snarled "It's a bruise!"

"We will have words with her when we are safely under way" Ianto assured everyone as he looked over at Jack and nodded. She was really needing some words whether she wanted to hear them or not.

"Right. Owen, the jar with the symbiote … place it here on the table would you" Jack asked and Owen looked surprised as he got it from the shelf and placed it there, looking at Ianto who was clearly the one who wanted it.

"Buckley is connected to this. One might argue this is his other half. If we take it with us it will go mad when he is close, giving us an early warning… maybe. It might go still, play possum. We know they do not talk now, cannot without her in a human host. The other argument is … we leave it here. If there is still a low frequency connection between them then … it will lead him here and by the time he works out the locking code and gets down here … we will be long gone."

"Leave him on the planet" Mickey saw what Ianto was saying "Slip out the back door kinda thing?"

"The vessel Jack and John found is perfect, who can say Buckley can even fly something and if he could … what way would he go without a compass?" Martha saw what they were saying "It is better to leave her here and hope rather than take her as insurance only to lead him to us before we are ready for lift off."

"That is my thought exactly" Ianto nodded "I want to run. Hard and fast."

"The mark of a good man is knowing when to stand and when to cut your losses" Jim agreed as he looked around the room "I say we go like cut cats and leave this thing here so he takes the bait."

"If we prime that lock right, it can lock on him once he gets in here, he will have to traverse the tunnel systems to get out" Tosh suddenly said, everyone turning to stare at her with interest.

"A trap, this as the cheese" Owen looked back at the jar with amusement, "fitting somehow. The fear he had put us through, running like rats in a maze only to be the one caught."

"I will need a few minutes to hack the locks" she muttered, "I will do both doors. See how he likes it"

"What if he doesn't' fall for it?" Andy asked.

"Oh … he will. We just give her a little bit of an incentive, tip out half the milk" Junior said with a maniacal glint that made him more like his father to look at than ever. "She will not die but will panic and yell for him, right?"

"Mean" Mickey grinned "OK. When Tosh says she is done, we do a rip and run."

"Yeas, we will move together as a group. No one left behind, we try to stay close together." Jack nodded "Ianto will shield as will those of us who can, John is waiting with the vessel warming her engines."

"I can't wait to sleep" Martha admitted as she stuffed things into a backpack, "Really goddamned slumber. Without fear of someone knocking on the door."

"Shit, I hope no one does, will be bloody cold outside the hull" Jack smiled and they all felt a little lighter as outside he moved closer.

They had to move too.


	56. making a break for it

They were exiting one by one to stand I the shelter of the trees, then it would be a fast run. Ianto was most worried about Jim and his bad hip. Bad knees and bad mood. He was tired too, they all were.

The other concern was the baby, Andy well aware of the need to keep him quiet while out there in the dark. The soft kitten call of a newborn would be a beacon to anyone even if they didn't have the gift.

"OK, Jack will lead. Mickey and Martha will flank Andy and Tanner. Junior you two will come behind so if Andy slows or gets disorientated you can push in him the right direction. If he needs to concentrate on Tanner he will need someone else for eyes. Rhys will be behind you two, Owen and Tosh last with me bringing up the rear. I will sweep in case there is someone or something behind us. Stephen, you and Janet stick by your Grandy, OK?"

Stephen nodded silently as he looked at Jack. They started to move from the safety of the trees of the open, running low to the ground as Ianto waited back at the trees, tapping each person lightly to signal time to move. Jack didn't look back, had complete faith in everyone to stick to the rules. After all, their lives depended on it.

Finally Ianto was able to move, sliding from behind the tree he had wanted to hug instead, running so low he was barely visible and Jack reached the safety of the first vessel to swing back, checking for him. His heart was in his mouth as he watched Ianto skim the long grass.

Gods he was invested in this man. The others were moving past Jack who was waving in the direction of the Firefly while still watching Ianto.

Then Ianto dropped, as did Jack's heart.

He motioned for those still running to come on … hurry up… to move their arses and a little whimper alerted him to the baby waking from its little milk induced snooze. Damn. They had hoped to do this without Tanner waking and Jack wondered if the little one had the gift, could feel Ianto panic?

_Why did Ianto panic?_

Jack swung to let his eyes focus on the different shadows, checking and seeing … there. Movement. There was movement over by the vehicle pool. Someone was … holy shit. Someone was heading behind the hover, their feet barely visible as they walked slowly and Jakc knew in a heartbeat it must be Buckley. Had to be.

Ianto was still down.

"Come on" Jack hissed, trying to send confidence to Into in the hopes he would run for it but as he checked the distance he knew Ianto was too far away.

And Tanner gave another little cry.

Everyone was crowding around Andy, trying to soothe and comfort the baby and Jack knew any minute a little man was going to fill his lungs and let rip as the cold air assaulted him. Everyone was starting to panic.

So close.

They were so close and to fail now ….

Ianto rose.

Everyone froze as Ianto stood at his full height and started to walk away in another direction, calling for the dog like he had lost him. Janet pressed to his boy's side to reassure him that it was a rouse and he was not about to race out there.

A trick.

Ianto was going to lead him away and it was working as the feet scuffed and moved.

"We have to move" Jack hissed.

"What's he doing?" Junior demanded in a low snarl "He's going to get caught."

"And we will get away" Jack sighed softly "He is drawing him away to give us a chance you stupid twat. A decoy, let's move."

They ran for the Firefly as she sat waiting, her running lights off and seemingly as dead as those around her. As they drew near John dropped from the belly of it to look at Jack with silent confusion.

"He found us" Jack said sadly "Ianto is leading him away."

"Well … fuck that!" John snarled, "I'll go and…"

"We are both needed to pilot this thing" Jack interrupted him "Ianto knew that. I can't go after him. Neither can you. No, we have to give him a chance to double back to us or … not."

"Fuck!" John stomped his foot like a child, looking out into the darkness like Ianto might materialize then he nodded. Jack was right. They had talked about this, knew this might happen and Ianto had made him promise that if he fell then John would keep moving forward. For the betterment of the group.

Jack helped them up the ladder, Gwen up top helping them as well and John kept watch with his gun cocked.

Finally they were all onboard and Jack tapped John's arm, John clambering up and running for the gun turret that faced the way Ianto had run with Buckley following.

Jack hesitated at the bottom of the ladder and sighed, his heart now a pool at the bottom of his feet as he slowly climbed, still scanning hopefully until he was in and forced to raise the ladder, closing the hatch.

"John?"

"Scanning, we have power!" John roared back, flicking on the running lights as Jack rose and ran for the flight deck.

John was right.

Time to call the bluff. Announce themselves and hopefully startle Buckley into hesitating, giving Ianto bough time to get back to them. Also firing her up meant Ianto might be able to see them if he was turned around in the dark.

Deep down Jack knew the real reason was a fully firing Firefly is capable of many things.

Fully arming her guns one of them.

John stepped into the firing seat and settled, waiting for the green light to tell him the guns were hot.

He scanned.

"come on!"


	57. ummmm ... hi

OK, one more then ... but it will not help LOL

.

.

* * *

57

Ianto was running, letting his instincts guide him away from the group and to somewhere he could stop and think. He found himself in what appeared to be a guard station. Three sides, able to crouch and get his breath back as his heart pounded in his chest.

Shit.

He had no idea where he was, how far the vessel was or even if they would wait for him.

_Why would they? They don't exactly need him now, do they?_

Ianto hated that little voice in the back of his mind, the voice of Jacob. That's why they could not control him, could never break him or infect him. Jacob already owned that part, the nasty evil part he swallowed down time and again.

Now it was telling him he ws gone, lost and forgotten.

_They were leaving, already firing up the engines, can you hear them? They do not need you to shield for them any more, they are free. Pity for you, poor useless and unloved little…._

Ianto popped his head up as a noise began to shake the building, the Firefly lifting off the ground and it was swinging in a slow arc, the guns in the turrets revolving to hone in on ….

_Holy shit. They are armed?_

Ianto stood, not afraid now as he knew Buckley did not have a gun or he would have used it already. Suddenly … he felt something he hadn't in a long time. Not since Jacob broke him.

Amusement.

Ianto watched the vessel as it hovered then skimmed delicately over the other ships, the grace showing the skill of the pilot and Ianto smiled as he also knew it was a handsome one at that.

Then he saw Buckley, standing there in the moonlight with a look of sheer anger, staring at Ianto who didn't know if he should react or not. I mean … if he was the reason Buckley was in the open was it a good thing?

_You are so dense. Yeah, stay where he can throw a knife or something dummy._

"Shut up Jacob" Ianto hissed to himself, his anger flaring and he knew. In that moment he knew what to do. He had never done it before, didn't know if he could but he had read of Psych 2s being able to and if John and Jack had faith in him being a 2, not a 3 then … well. Fuck you Jacob.

"And fuck you Buckley" he said as he let it all out, screaming with rage at the man who had taken a step towards him with a knife now visible in the moonlight. Ianto opened his shields, let the madman in … let the mad man look … let the mad man feel … let the mad man find the other one who was stronger. Meaner and by far more advanced.

Ianto took a step now, Buckley hesitating as the thing he had been following, feeling and thought he knew was now something totally foreign to him and the symbiote that was scrabbling about for purchase in a mind so torn, so frayed that there seemed no viable leverage spot.

There wasn't.

Just scars. Just destruction, torment and rage.

Ianto released Jacob.

Finally … after years of thinking he was stuck there, the symbiote seeking had finally disconnected something in its quest to meet Ianto. Instead meeting the remnant of Jacob who was more than happy to meet a fellow voyeur.

Ianto's scream died, his arms out like he was a sacrifice, the feeling of emptiness settling for a moment. A random, foreign feeling of silence was almost like a bereavement, even if it was releasing a tormented spirit that he had long since wanted gone.

Buckley seemed to sway, the confusion clear as he dropped the knife and his hands went to his ears, slamming against them like Ianto was still screaming. Oh he was. Inside he was now gaining momentum, pitch and quality honing in.

Up on the Myfanwy Jack grunted as they got closer, John yelping as he jerked in the Gunner's Chair "What the fuck is that? Jax, what is that?"

"SHIELD!" Jack roared as he felt tendrils stroking at him and recognised Ianto's 'scent' "WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT, SHIELD JOHNNY!"

John ground his teeth, snarling as he slammed down every shielding known to man, swinging the guns to hone in on the one he thought was causing the pain in their minds, Junior also slamming back against the bulkhead as his girl tried to comfort him.

Gwen looked around with confusion, "What is happening? What's going on?"

"I don't know" Owen replied uneasily "But we best sit the fuck down in case he crashes us or something."

"No!" Gwen screamed "Let me out!"

She threw herself at some controls by the large cargo bay doors, punching wildly at buttons as Rhys and Andy yelled at her, the baby thrust at Toshiko who was backing up against the far wall with horror.

Gwen finally got the right button and the klaxons sounded, lights flashed and the huge ramp started to descend.

"FUCK!" Owen roared "What do we do, how the fuck do we stop it? It's gonna scrape on the vessels below!"

Andy started to frantically push buttons as Rhys wrestled Gwen to the ground, shouting at her as they swung wildly, the opening door creating drag and a loss of control when Jack was already struggling through a psychic attack.

"Shit" John said to no one in particular "I think we are gonna crash now!"


	58. Mind your head

The ramp continued to lower and with no ground to set off the proximity mechanism to stop it there was nowhere to go except down, almost to breaking point and it scraped against the first vessel as Jack struggled with the controls though the pain of Ianto's release.

The sound was loud in the cargo bay, the baby screaming now as Tosh tried to get inside some cargo nets in the hope that it would offer some protection. Mickey shouted to Martha, throwing the gun from his right hip at her as he pulled the pulse rifle from the clasps holding it to the bulkhead by the doors, both of them seeing the opening as a danger zone.

.

.

.

Down on the ground Buckley was still silent and stood stock still as Ianto took another step. Ianto was panting heavily, the lights from the Firefly lighting them both up in a strange parody to the blue tractor beam of the alien vessel. This seemed to confuse Buckley more, now looking up as the vessel swung overhead, John trying to focus long enough to fire the guns but his eyes were watering so much that he could only grunt and convulse in his seat.

Jack was losing the battle as he cried out to Ianto, Ianto breaking his concentration to look up as he finally saw that the vessel was almost directly above them, looking back in time to see Buckley get swept up by the ramp as it swung past, decapitating the man with ease and Ianto gaped as he watched the body slowly fall to its knees, then forward to land in front of him. The body flopped like a fish out of water, the blood spurting on the ground as the head stopped rolling to land next to the landing gear of an old junker, the mouth moving in a silent scream as the symbiote realised its host was dying. It was trapped, doomed to die as well.

"well" Ianto said softly as he looked around, waking up from a bad dream to a weird fantasy world full of weird "Shit. That's gonna leave a mark."

Ianto's sudden spike of amusement broke the attack he was releasing on everyone without even realising he was, Jack taking a deep breath as he looked down at the controls and swore, regaining some altitude and stopping the slow spin as John snarled and swung the guns with a manic glee only to find the man he wanted to kill was already dead.

"FUCK!" he now convulsed in the chair for another reason, a temper tantrum as he clung to the gun levers, his body being tossed about in the restraints as he screamed with rage that he had not been allowed to kill something.

Martha was hanging from one side of the Cargo bay by suicide straps, one hand clinging to the ship, the other swinging a handgun as her husband Mickey mirrored her on the other side. They were calm, ready and both amused as they laughed softly, making eye contract.

OK, they liked this gang.

A lot.

"What do you think?" Mickey called out to her.

"I want chicken for dinner!" she called back, "I'm hungry!"

Mickey laughed as he shouted "Woman, you are always wanting chicken!"

"What. I like chicken!" she shot back as Jim grunted, rising from where he had fallen in the madness, reaching for some controls.

"Jack?" the coms crackled in the flight deck.

"Jim? Is everyone OK" Jack replied, almost laughing now as he saw that Ianto was fine, standing there with his hands on his hips looking a the body with a 'look at this mess' attitude.

"Well … the mad woman fell out, dragging her poor fella with her" Jim said calmly "Other than that …peachy."

"What? Jack gaped, then started to look frantically for the two people, Gwen and Rhys on top of a huge freighter. Both seems to be lying prone, then he saw Rhys' leg move and let out a breath as he now saw a scrape against the metal beside them as well, they had just rolled out, not really fallen far then.

Jack called out to John "Scan. Are there any other warm bodies out there? Were we a dinner bell?"

John focused, looking through the infrared cameras for anyone that might have heard the melee and come running to help or hinder. He soon called back "CLEAR!"

Jack put the firefly down, the satisfying crunch of the body under the landing gear an added extra just because.

"JACK!" Ianto roared "I am not cleaning that!"

Jack sat there blinking, then started to laugh.

* * *

 


	59. scoop?

Jack was running, the engines idling as the Firefly sat on the ground, Mickey and Martha now on the ramp with their guns swinging around, scanning for anything just in case John was too mental to tell them.

Jack was making little whimpering noises as he blew past them and they turned to watch him reach Ianto, scooping him into his arms and slamming their mouths together, Janet barking as he ran form Stephen to join the two men. Stephen shakily got to his feet and yawned, then frowned as he yawned again.

"You OK kiddo?" Owen asked, looking at the boy who seemed to be having a problem with his ears.

"My ears popped" Stephen said "It feels … funny."

Owen stepped closer "Like … you heard a pop or the sound suddenly changed?"

"Yeah. Like … I was underwater and now it's all so clear" Stephen frowned, looking around with confusion as Owen considered things then said "Can you hear the symbiote?"

Stephen looked at him with confusion.

"Janet. Do you hear Janet?"

"Yes, of course. He says Grandy is kissing Ianto" Stephen nodded. "He is … filling him?"

"But you don't hear others. Do you? Did you hear others before?"

"Yes. Yes, like a crowd in the background but it's … it's this. I'm safe in here!" Stephen looked around.

"Beryllium lined" John said as he appeared, staggering over to pull his son into his arms "We cannot connect with the outside, or them in here. The worms can't reach you in here, the hull is too strong. I think maybe that's why this class of Firefly was decommissioned about two years ago. These things started their invasion … infiltration … occupation or whatever you want to call it … back then … they put the suggestion forward?"

"Makes sense" Jim agreed, turning to watch Andy as he untangled Tosh and hugged her along with the baby, the relief raw.

"Owen, when you have a sec ….ah…. Gwen and Rhys are still up on that freighter over there" John pointed and Owen gaped. "I think they took quite a hit."

"What the fuck?"

"Go on, you can get them down right?" John said with wide eyes, Owen now starting to splutter then he stormed to the top of the ramp to peer out.

"OI! Stop the tonsil hockey! How do we get the bloody twats off the ship there?" he roared and Ianto leaned back as Jack tuned to look at Owen then follow his finger that was pointing with anger at Rhys and Gwen.

"You two OK?" Ianto was instantly worried "Stay there. Christ, Jack! Get them down from there, oh Gwen, wait there!"

"Stay there, I will come to you!" Jack laughed as he waved at them, then helped Ianto up the ramp, motioning for everyone to get back from the edge. "It's OK. I will scoop them up."

"Scoop?" Owen repeated "What? Scoop? They are not ice-cream ya know!"

Jack went to the flight deck and was pleased when Ianto instantly settled in the other seat. The Firefly lifted off and Jack expertly swung her arse up and over to rest on the top of the vessel, Rhys and Gwen running up the ramp.

"Are you two OK?" Owen was in Doctor mode, pulling at them and Rhys yelped as he showed his arm with a gash to it.

"I think I twisted my ankle" Gwen whined and Sally rolled her eyes as she pointed out she had run on it pretty damned well. "What's it to you? All you could do is cling to your boy!"

"My MAN can at least say I didn't almost kill him!" Sally snarled back.

"Enough of that!" Ianto said gently "We are all tried, freaked out and wanting as far from this place as we can go. Let's focus on that. Something to eat, somewhere to sleep and then….only then… can we speak to one another with some civility please?"

"I'm with Eye Candy" John nodded.

"No you bloody well are not!" Jack roared "He's mine!"

"Well … first of all. Your name is not tattooed across my arse Captain, I am my own self and secondly … I think he means that he agrees with me, not that he wants to snuggle." Ianto said softly, everyone starting to snigger at the silliness of the thing.

Only mere moments ago they all almost died …almost failed and now there is an argument about sleeping arrangements?

"Jack. We had a deal!" Ianto said as he swung to address him and Jack made a noise of surprise.

"Well? We are off the planet" Ianto shrugged like they were talking about the weather as they went back to the flight deck "Now I get to shag you silly …right? Payment for being a good boy?"

Jack's face changed as he leered "Yeah? Me a good boy? Or you?"

"But if I wake up to a tattoo across my derriere you might be in trouble mister" Ianto said and then smiled softly as he accepted a kiss. "Seriously Cariad … just a full five hours sleep and I would be … ever so …. Up for anything."

"Ooooo, Ianto" Jack crooned "you are making promises now!"

"Jack … I promise you one thing … I never want to go back there again" Ianto sighed and Jack knew Ianto was not talking about the planet they were leaving for dust.

"I will never leave you, as long as we stick together, it will be OK" Jack assured him reaching across the space between the seats to touch Ianto, the instant connection soothing as it had been each time it had happened since they had boarded.

The silence … that deafening silence … gone. Jack's heartbeat strong and true in Ianto's head as he settled to watch the stars get closer.

Jack would mind him now.

.

.

.

.

OK, so ends this part. Yes, there will be more… when I get there ya bossy bums! I just want the space part on it's own since it will be a new adventure. Yes. Gwen will find herself inviting some smack downs.


End file.
